


Untitled thoughts pt.2

by supernavy97



Series: DBSK/TVXQ/JYJ [2]
Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, JYJ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Emoshinki, Fluff, I like reminiscing db5k times a lot, Multi, OT5, One Shot, YunJae, lawsuit, might get you sad so beware, non-au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-05-21 11:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14914158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernavy97/pseuds/supernavy97
Summary: Standalone short stories about DBSK from predebut days to nowadays, either fluff or angst (non-AU)."Always keep the faith"[some of them will be yunjae]1. Joining Super Junior [ot5]2. Triplets [YJ]3. Like a Phoenix [YJ]4. Those rare tears of yours [ot5]5. A love like war [YJ]6. Things like [ot5]7. Of goodbyes and new beninnings [ot5/YJ]8. To be loved [Yoochun/Jaejoong bromance]9. Nine [YJ]10. A room full of dreams [ot5]11. What love is about [Changmin/Jaejoong bromance]12. Strangers in the night [YJ]13. Together? Together [Yoochun/Jaejoong bromance]14. Reaching out to you [Changmin/Jaejoong bromance]15. Loving you – a little bit more everyday [YJ]





	1. Joining Super Junior

[2017 – 2018]

 

**Joining Super Junior**

 

The first time Changmin jokes about joining Super Junior it’s a late autumn evening and they are chilling in the house they share in Japan. When Yunho hears him, he arches an eyebrow and stares at him for a moment, before laughing the issue away, a while after.  
Changmin smiles back and keeps on reading the book he had left on the sofa.

The second time Changmin jokes about joining Super Junior it’s winter and they are discussing the schedule for their upcoming concert in Seoul. Yunho doesn’t laugh and stares at Changmin with sad eyes, his pride hurt. They don’t say a word and for days Yunho refuses to talk to him.

The third time Changmin jokes about joining Super Junior it’s spring and they are on a plane headed to Dubai. Yesung is filming him, but Yunho is busy talking with other people and doesn’t seem to be listening to them. Or so Changmin thought.  
Yunho actually heard him, but hid the pain behind a broken smile.

The last time Changmin jokes about joining Super Junior it’s summer and they are fighting with the broken air conditioner to survive the hot weather that has imprisoned the capital. Changmin has just drop a whole bucket of water on Yunho as a joke, but Yunho is now angry and screaming and Changmin shouts back how Super Junior members wouldn’t have minded, how they would have laughed along and probably thanked him for having refreshed them.  
At the mention of the fellow group, Yunho screams louder and reminds the younger guy of what they had to go through to protect their name, of how hard they had to work, of all the sacrifices they had to do. He tells him that it hurts when he says he would exchange him with their friends and colleagues and even though Yunho knows that he’s not serious, that he wouldn’t actually do so, it hurts that he likes to think about it. 

Changmin hadn’t really thought about the words he said, but looking at Yunho he feels his eyes getting wet and warm tears rolling down his face. And he’s hurt, too. Because even though he knows all the sufference they had to endure in order to protect their name, he also knows that _back then_ everything was easier. Practise was hard, for sure, and so were the meetings and the thick schedules, but he would have had an innocent Junsu to prank along with Yoochun, he would have had a smiling Jaejoong always caring for him and a happier Yunho to deal with.

They look at each other for those that seem ages and when Yunho finally decides to let it go, they both break down, painfully aware of lost light-hearted times and of a deep melancholy unable to be forgotten, even after years.


	2. Triplets

[2001]

**Triplets**

_It’s dark. And cold. And silent_. No street light in the freezing night of Seoul, dreamed city of lost country boys.  
Jaejoong hurries among the alleys of the capital, heading for the restaurant where he works at dinner, in order to earn enough money to get by. They’re never enough, though.

He waits. And cooks. And washes. It’s past midnight when he’s finally free to go, a bunch of money in his pocket that won’t last till the following week.  
Jaejoong pouts and blows circles of smoke in the air: he’s still so hungry. He hopes he will be able to catch the last bus.

He’s lucky. And jumps on. And sits down. The moon rays are shining on his face while he’s falling asleep, rocked by the waving movements of the bus.  
Jaejoong wakes up right in time for his stop and jumps off the car, greeting the driver. He’s about to reach the hostel where he lives when someone catches his attention.

 _It’s bright. And warm. And noisy_. A guy is breakdancing under the sign of a long-closed shop,  second hand clothes folding his body and a ripped tooth breaking his smile.  
Jaejoong feels something rising in his chest and runs away, scared by the rhythm his heart is now following.

And it’s sudden. And rough. And unexpected. The guy grabs his arm and turns him around. “You lost this” he says.  
Jaejoong looks at his hands and finds one of his gloves, wet by the snowflakes that are now covering both of them.

Thank you. And Sorry. And I really have to go. He replies, hands trembling, and cheeks reddening.  
Jaejoong lowers his head, puts the glove in the same pocket he put the money before and he’s about to run away again when the guy breaks the silence.

You’re welcome. And no need to be sorry. And can I ask you a question?  
But he doesn’t wait for Jaejoong’s answer before going on.  
“Do you always speak in triplets?”

And Jaejoong laughs. And smiles. And this, will probably be his last triplet as there aren’t enough words in three verses to describe that hurricane named Jung Yunho.

 


	3. Like a phoenix

[2011]

** Like a phoenix **

_Wake up, open your eyes to the new day and tell me: what do you see?_

Black, an ocean of black lights.  
It’s strange though, he recalled them different: clearer. And brighter.  
Maybe he has changed, or something around them changed and has changed both of them as a consequence.  
  


_Sometimes you need black in order to distinguish other colors._

He presses the button near the night stand and the room suddently lights up; for the first time he finds the glare annoying.

He brings one hand to his face and suppresses a yawn while looking over the window, wondering which day it might be: maybe it’s Friday and the week is about to end, or maybe it’s Monday and the week has just started. He doesn’t remember. And if it wasn’t for the red crosses that Yoochun regularly signs on the calendar, he couldn’t even tell a month from the other, a season from the following one; the only difference would be the light: shorter in winter, leaving him alone in the dark for a longer time.

He doesn’t notice the cold either: seasons are all the same, the small line on the thermometer raises and lowers, but the stable shield that surrounds him doesn’t move and he stays so, frozen inside.

 

_Get up, the soldier that used to fight by my side, where did he go?_

Jaejoong laughs, and suffocates the moans in the bitterness of his voice.  
He smiles, holding back the tears.  
He lowers his eyelids and the nightmares come alive again, ghosts trapped between fantasy and reality that scream at him, _accusing him_ : they chase him everywhere and they manage to get even to the most hidden places of his soul, there where he thought nobody would have ever reached.  
They spit insults, they hurt, and he, unharmed, picks them up, mistaking them for true. He squeezes his eyes shut and wallows in the deepest misery, obsessed by that word, stinging and precise like a needle: _traitor_.

He disappeared.

 

_Find him back. I used to hide and you used to search, remember?_

No, he doesn’t remember.  
He closed the window of the past long ago, since when he had started to see their backs instead of their faces.  
There is no need to remember and dive in again in that devasted scenery: the storming sea and the blowing winds, the huge waves rising from the seabed so much they almost touched the sky, mixing with the freezing drops raining down from above. Water was everywhere, raging, moving from one side to the other without having a clear goal and he recalls being in the middle of it, alone, lost in a hell of bluish flames.  
The sky screamed and so did he, but as strong as they were, the thunders covered his voice, too feeble to be heard.  
  


_You have always been a liar, but I loved you anyway._

The guy laughs again, louder this time: the more his voice raises, the more his hearbeats aren’t likely to be heard. The same heartbeats that stopped just to speed up at the mention of love.

Go away.

Jaejoong doesn’t want to hear that voice anymore: it hurts too much and he has suffered enough.

 

_Jaejoong, what is love for you?_

There was a time in which he would have answered “Yunho” without doubts; he would have smiled and he would have hidden in those hugs he used to love so much. But now it is different and “love” and “Yunho” don’t seem to have anything in common anymore.

Love is the person who saved him from destruction, who supported him during those moments of neverending sufference, without letting him go.

_Look around you, even in the deepest darkness you may find a light._

His gaze wanders beyond the skyscrapers built around the city, over there, where the world seems absorbed in a permanent peace: it’s dawn.  
Colors have become brighter, turning into reddish shades so familiar as well as melancholic.  
He feels something tickling his eyes, willing to get out, but a sudden knock on the door forestalls him, distracting him from his thoughts.

_Choose, another time._

He gets closer to the door and opens it. He doesn’t need to ask to know who it is, he feels it’s him everytime even before his presence confirms it.  
Yoochun is like that: an unexpected hurricane that doesn’t make any damage.   
  


He looks into the dark shades of his eyes and finds the typical dimming of those who get enchanted, lingering on the past too much and he knows its cause so damn well.  
He recalls the program of the previous night: the stage too big for the _two_ of them alone, the crowd too small and the expressions too sad for the song they were singing.   
He remembers _his_ hesitation before saying those words that Jaejoong too felt burning in his throat, willing to get out. And then the melody went on, along with the screams and the lights and those balloons so red that hurt.   
Cracks expanded on the surface of his heart, chasing deeper ones, and leaving an invisible scar over the almost completely ripped flesh.

How does it still manage to beat, Jaejoong wonders everyday. 

Now, however, he smells Yoochun’s perfume, a pair of strong hands ready to hold him and that lightness only a new love can bring, that serenety long desired during his sleepless nights.

_Reflect, and find what you truly want._

Jaejoong moves to the side and lets him in.  
They sit down on the counch and talk, and joke, and finally a smile comes back on his face, a real one, not forced.  
The heaviness he was feeling goes away and slowly both of them cling to that new tranquility they only manage to find when they are together.  
Maybe, _together_ , they have discovered an escape route.

 

_I’ll ask you again, Jaejoong, what is love for you?_

Yoochun.  
The answer is different now, but so is the rhythm of his heart: calm, not hurried anymore.   
Yoochun hugs him, leaving a soft kiss between his hair and whispering sweet words at the same time.  
Jaejoong closes his eyes and feels two big hands getting closer, while a pair of muscular arms surrounds him, leaving him with the ephimeral beauty of an illusion. 

_Jaejoong._

Hearing his name whispered in the same sensual way _he_ used to still gets him, but he blames it on the few hours of sleep and loses himself in the affections of the younger guy.

However, when he keeps on thinking about _him_ instead of Yoochun, of _his_ strong cologne instead of that sweet aroma, he moves away, sliding down the clear wall of the living room. When he reaches the ground, memories come alive again and they are set free inside of him like a flock of butterflies, filling the emptiness he used to be devoured by. 

He looks back and feels the same emotions of those infernal months: the confusion, the hate, the resentment, the sufferance and then there it is, the loneliness, the most painful, the one that didn’t let him go for so long and the same one that he spit in the notes of those scores that he will manage to sing some day.   
Yoochun had been there when he had needed him, but he would have never been able to take _his_ place.   
For how hard he tried not to want it, not to think about it, _he_ was always there: on his body as well as in his soul, marked under that tattoo that everyday reminded him of keeping his faith, of believing in that love that for a while he thought of forgetting but that now was about to rise from its own ashes.

 

_I’m sorry, but I am too selfish to let you go._

He sees Yoochun getting closer and there they are, those dimmings, again, because of him, this time. The guy closes his eyes before taking a deep breath and when he opens them again he’s smiling.  
Jaejoong knows very well that he’s hiding his true emotions, just like when he had supported him, telling him everything was ok while their worlds were slowly breaking down; he knows that he probably hates him, but he gets down at his same level and caresses his shoulder, pressing a pair of white headphones on his ears, before starting the music and getting out of the house. 

Jaejoong is sure of having hurt him, as he’s sure that if he went out, he would find him sitting on the stairs, thinking and regretting.   
But they have to gather their strenghts and go on, they both have to. 

_Forgive me_.

A new melody breaks into his mind, first feeble, then stronger, while he starts recognizing the rhythm and the words come out whispered in petals from his rose mouth. 

**どうして君を好きになってしまったんだろう？** **  
** Why did he fall in love with Yunho? He doesn’t know. Maybe it was because of his attentions, maybe because of his charisma or because of that feeling of protection he used to feel everytime he hugged him.

While the lyrics melts with his thoughts, he realises how much he has being missing him. Yunho, with his unreadable expressions, his neverending love and his eyes always searching for him. 

He realises how stupid he was to blame everything on him, when the only thing he did was trying to protect their dream.

_Hug me, you have nothing to be forgiven for._

 

_Wake up, open your eyes to the new day and tell me: what do you see?_

The song comes to an end and he slowly raises his eyelids, enjoying for the first time in a while the light of the new day.  
He takes out his phone and sends a message.  
Red, an ocean of red lights. 

_Love me: it’s you and me, it’s the only way._

A ring surprises him soon after.

_I love you too, stupid._

 

 

 


	4. Those rare tears of yours

[2018]

****

** Those rare tears of yours **

Changmin doesn’t cry easily, he never had and never will. However there has been few times in which he hasn’t been able to hold back those salty drops of water which rolled down in rivers on the guy’s untainted cheeks.  


The first time was during the MKMF award ceremony back in 2008 when he finally allowed himself to be the 20-years-old kid that he still was and tears covered his face, unable to stop themselves. He tried to hide them, but emotions were making his soul tremble and he found it impossible to win over them.  
He felt Yoochun’s hand circling his waist trying in vain to calm him down while Yunho was giving his speech for the best-album-of-the-year-award. Right after he noticed Jaejoong’s soft looks and he felt four pair of arms over him, tangling him in a big group hug that finally made his heart at peace.

Another time was during the WITH tour back in 2015 right before their enlistments. This time it was slightly different: they were in Tokyo and they were alone, the two of them. There was no Yoochun, no Junsu, no Jaejoong coming over him with reassuring words. And he wasn’t the only one crying. Yunho began it all, infact, breaking down over the sweet notes of _With Love_ and screaming to the big arena for the years coming ahead of them. And he broke down with him, eyes burning under the night sky, remembering the years that went by instead of thinking about the ones that were waiting for them, remembering the pain and the joys and that bright color that was always there to remind him of what they were: a five-stars-constellation shining in the darkness.

The last time was during a meeting, somewhere lost in 2018. Ten years had passed since that first time and _this_ time it was completely different: they were in a small apartment he wasn’t familiar with, with faces that belonged to the past. There was Yunho, but there were Yoochun and Junsu and Jaejoong too, and Changmin couldn’t think of a good explanation to describe what was happening. It wasn’t until Jaejoong approached him with that warm smile of his that had always brighten his days, embracing him in a tender hug, that he realized he was crying. Tears were falling down from the depth of his soul, exposing feelings he didn’t know he was repressing, while he grabbed on his hyung’s shoulders for any kind of support. He heard Yoochun making a joke sobbing between laughs and only then did he realized they were tears of joy, as unexpected as the reunion that was finally taking place. Changmin mentally cursed them for the best surprise he could have ever asked for for his 30 th birthday.  
“You are so annoying, but why have I missed you so much?”

And from then on, having given it a whole new meaning, Changmin decided that crying was not so bad anymore.


	5. A love like war

 

**A love like war** **  
** \- three times Kim Jaejoong couldn’t hide his feelings and one time Jung Yunho finally gives him an answer -

**[Kim Jaejoong]**

**2010 – _For you it’s goodbye (for me it’s waiting)_ **

Jaejoong is tired from days of neverending practise and when he goes down the stairs that connect the backstage with the real stage and meets the screaming crowd in front of him, he suddently feels lonely.  
Despite being holding a concert, he feels alone for the first time in his whole career, stuck in the middle of a dark ocean. There is this hidden emotion he doesn’t manage to name, but deep inside he knows it’s because something is missing. _Someone_ is missing.

The melody begins and he finds himself following its rhythm. Despite the heaviness he feels on his heart, everything looks the same and he relies on that sense of familiarity to go on. The world looks exactly the same it did years ago and he wonders if he’s the only one that has changed and that now sees everything from a different prospective.  
But something is missing, someone is missing, on the stage as well as in his life, and it is impossible to avoid the emptiness it comes with, even though he seems to be the only one noticing it.  
He must be crazy.  
Or peraphs, just broken.

_Except for your empty space_   
_Everything is the same_   
_My heart must be broken_

It is difficult to accept the consequences of your actions, even more the effects of the ones you were almost forced to take, obliged by external conditions that didn’t really leave you any choice.  
And it hurts more, because he would have never taken those decisions, he would have never left, if it wasn’t for the injustices they were being treated with. He would’ve always stayed by their side.  
By _his_ side.

Jaejoong hides his fighting emotions behind the sweetness of his voice.  
Maybe, one day, when they will have overcome all the hate and misunderstandings, when stupid company policies won’t come in between friendship and love anymore, maybe, _that day_ , he will come looking for him and Jaejoong will welcome him with a waterfall of tears. But they will be tears of joy.

_I sent you away_   
_But my waiting has just begun_

 

Maybe his struggles will be useless, and he won’t meet his eyes in the same secret way he used to do before.  
Maybe his waiting will be vain, and his hand won’t squeeze his shoulder anymore, in that reassuring way he used to do so much.  
Or maybe he will be forgotten and he will become nothing more than a lost memory among thousands.  
But maybe, one day, _that day_ will come and then all the years of waiting and yearning will have been worth it.

_Be happy my love_   
_Until that day, forever that day (when we can be together)_

It’s ok to forget, for now, hiding the desire behind a broken smile.  
It’s ok to make new friends, he believes, repressing the green eye monster he used to feel so much.  
It’s ok to move on.  
In order to be happy, in order to overcome the unbearable pain of an unwanted separation: it’s ok to fall in love again.

_I want you to forget me_   
_Don't hesitate_

 

And while Jaejoong is singing the last notes of the sad ballad that made everyone’s eyes teary _changing the meaning of the whole song with the final words_ he realises something that makes his heart tremble in the chilling air of the night: despite what the future will hold for them, their love is strong enough to survive.

 

**For now**

_***_

**2011 – _Nine_ **

Jaejoong is lying on the blankets of his bed, eyes closed, while his mind runs from thought to thought, remembering a past he doesn’t seem willing to forget. He counts on his hands the days that went by, the months that passed without him even realising it and he touches the skin of his chest, there where it beats, feeling the same heaviness over his heart.

Time passes but he’s unable to forget and unable to go on.  
He’s stuck in a limbo, alone, tormented by regrets and what ifs, disillusioned by a present he never wanted and a future he doesn’t believe in anymore.

 

_My heart is hot, it’s beating and I keep crying_   
_What should I do?_   
_Should I go to you and kneel before you?_

 

Sometimes he thinks back before the past few years, to that time when it was so easy to smile and so unusual to cry. That time when a soft kiss between his hair would have put him to sleep and a caress on his cheek would have waken him up the following morning.  
However, he’s very aware of the fact that they are just memories which belong to a time he won’t ever get back, a happiness he took for granted, a love he didn’t fight enough for.  
Reminiscing, he finds himself thinking about those words he’ve always felt but that maybe he didn’t show that much. Maybe, if he had said an “ _I love you_ ” more, he wouldn’t be crying over their broken relationship now, trying to let go of something too attached to his heart to ever manage to.  
Jaejoong whispers to the darkness of the room, only witness of the loneliness of his heart, as if the now spoken words could fill the empty spaces of those he didn’t say.

 

 _We know now- we don’t have to say it to know_  
 _We just need to shout everyday for the yesterdays that aren’t far away_  
 _I’m sorry I couldn’t speak_ \- **I love you**

 

However, something grows inside of him, slowly, a strange sense of awareness that fights his previous thoughts. He doesn’t want to let go.  
He rolls over the messy sheets and takes the smarphone on the nightstand, unlocking it. A picture of them looks back at him, hands touching and eyes searching for each other. It was taken sometime back in 2008, before the promotion of their 3rd album Mirotic: they were fighting for the last piece of meat and the playfulness and intimacy were carefully immortalized in the picture by a sneeky Yoochun.  
He smiles, holding back the tears he feels itching behind his eyes, and digits the numbers he came to know by heart. He waits until the device starts making the regular call tone before hanging up, as always. He doesn’t even know why he does so, maybe it’s his way of staying sane.  
He calls, but never lets the smartphone ring enough for the other to hear it. He’s not that brave.  
He tries to build some bridges between them, but burns them down before they can even reach the other and because of that his feelings and words remain unspoken under the rubbles.

 

_I tried calling multiple times_   
_I worried about what I would say_   
_Without me knowing_   
_When I sleep and wake up,_   
_I keep searching for you_

 

Jaejoong closes his phone and leaves it on the bed, getting up and opening the curtains to a new day.  
He finds it extremely hard to endure the pain the separation left him with. Some days he cannot even manage to get out of the bed. But not today.  
Different shades of red colours the sky among which the sun will rise in some minutes. He looks at the horizon and wonders about that tiny line that separates Earth from the sky, diving and connecting at the same time those two worlds so different from each other.  
He wishes he could be rain, reaching the edges of both of them with his tiny drops.  
  
He comes to think that _they_ are not so different from them: so close, yet so far apart.  
While the sun makes his way in the world of the livings, Jaejoong promises himself something.  
He cannot change the past and he cannot take back those nine years they shared together; he cannot fight for it anymore, but what he can do is fight for their future, a bright future he wants to believe in while falling asleep at the end of the day.  
He can keep the faith for both of them and he can hold on to that tiny string that still connects them: so fragile, yet so strong.

 

_Wait for me- let’s not get too far apart_   
_I will promise to the world in front of me_

 

 

***

 

 

**2013 – _Though I loved you_ (remake of Kim Kwang Seok) **

Jaejoong has never thought it could be possible but it was 2013 and he was holding his first solo concert. He has also never thought he could have ever lived a day without seeing Yunho’s smiling face, but it has already been three years and his feature has started to become blurred in his mind. Sometimes he finds himself drawing them, but he always stop as soon as he realises he’s beginning to forget them, afraid he will fail to remember them completely if he decides to go on.

It’s a starry night, that night, and Jaejoong smiles in the night sky, breathing in that new adventure. He takes the microphone in his hands and holds it very tightly as the melody begins.  
It’s a sad melody, again, this new album conceiving all the emotions he has been feeling for quite some time. Those same emotions he used to cheerish so much, but that lately, in his dull and lonely life, seemed nothing more than a memory to envy.  
Love. How hard was it to love?

 

_Sometimes I will shed tears longing for you_   
_Sometimes my heart will twinge with loneliness_   
_Though I loved you_

 

And he has loved. How much he has loved.  
Jaejoong was one of those people that couldn’t seem able to love in a normal way: either they loved too much or they didn’t love at all.  
And it was good, it was funny, it was sweet, but when problems got in the way and small disagreements turned into fights, caresses and kisses into screams and tears, he realised he didn’t want all of that for neither of them. They didn’t deserve that. _He_ didn’t deserve that.  
It all just started with a small misunderstanding that somehow blowed up into that lawsuit before any of them could make something about it and when Jaejoong saw all the pain he was causing him, he decided to let go.  
And in that very moment, he chose to leave.  
He chose to stop.  
He chose to love a little bit less,  
for the sake of them both.

 

_I was just only able to look at you from afar_   
_Unable to come close_

_Though I wanted to remain close by your side_   
_I had no choice but to leave_

****

Jaejoong thinks of Yunho in the chilly air of the night, a black sweater on his torso and a purple shade between his hair. He thinks of his sharp jaw line, of his almond brown eyes and that sweet smile always welcoming him. He thinks of the nights they spent together looking at the stars, tracing the points of that constellation so close to their hearts, of those wasted dancing in too crowded clubs and of those consumed making love under the blankets. He thinks of their first date in that wrecked ramen restaurant, when Yunho still had his crooked tooth and his own hair was still black, a little too long on his shoulders. He thinks of what they’ve done, of who they’ve become and of the choices they had to make, the views on life they could no longer share. And in the middle of his thoughts, Jaejoong realises that love is what brought him to make every decision, to take up any challenge and while smiling at the unchanged feelings towards the younger guy, he screams the last notes of the now ending song. ****

****

_Though I loved you_

__

****

_***_

**[Jung Yunho]**

**2014 - _Tied ship_ **

The first time Yunho hears Jaejoong singing it is 2001 and he has just got accepted into the company. A small crowd of trainees is waiting outside the practise room he is rehearsing in and he finds himself as mesmerized and amazed as they are, while listening to the sweet melodies he is working on.  
It is that same day, when the older boy locks those doe smiling eyes with his, that he realises he wiill fall in love with him, no matter what.

It’s 2010 when Yunho finds himself listening to his soathing voice for the first time after the separation that has left him with bitter words and hurting feelings. Jaejoong is all dressed in white and the light colour creates contrast with the dark shade of his hair.  
However, that’s not what captures Yunho’s attention.  
The once confident and strong leader of the Rising Gods of the East breaks down upon hearing the sweet words coming out from the guy’s mouth on the screen. He squeezes his shirt, following the story of goodbyes and broken loves the other is telling and he feels warm tears rolling down his face as soon as the song ends.  
What the other doesn’t know, however, is that he’s waiting too.

It’s 2011 when Yunho hears Jaejoong’s sweet voice again: he’s in a small cafè in Tokyo and some girls are watching JYJ’s new world tour, melting in front of the older boy’s enchanting melodies. Unaware of his presence, Yunho lays in a bit, watching the live show over the smaller girl’s shoulders.

It’s 2013 when Yunho seems to find a pattern behind Jaejoong’s dramatic ballads, matching the sadness their breaking up left them with, with the words sang in the older guy’s lyrics. He listens to the voice cracking while the feelings seem to be too much, but no tear escape his eyes, dry because of sleepless crying nights which Yunho is well aware of, having gone through that too.  
He touches the screen with his long fingers and traces down the other’s features.  
“ _I love you_ ” remains words whispered in the night.

And it’s 2014 when Yunho finally decides that it’s time to give Jaejoong an answer.  
They are in Japan and they’re carrying out their Tree tour. He doesn’t tell Changmin he won’t be dancing during his solo until the last minute as he knows the other will try to dissuade him in that protecting way he’s so used to now.  
It feels awkward, however: he should be the one doing the protective thing. He shoudn’t have the need to feel protected.

It’s a fresh spring night when he jumps on the stage, a mere microphone on his hands and no dancer to back him up. The crowd is almost startled, but Yunho doesn’t care at the moment. He doesn’t care at all, to be honest, because this performance is not for them to feel, is not for them to keep. It’s a show for _him_ , a way to remind him of the feelings Yunho never let go of, despite the harsh words and the awful fights. It’s something to hold, something to treasure, something to hang on to during the hard times he’s sure they will have to face.

Yunho begins right from the start, from that day their lives suddently took different routes and didn’t seem able to cross anymore. He remembers Jaejoong’s calls always ending as soon as he took up the phone, as if the the other didn’t realise he could actually hear him sniffing, feeling the other’s broken cry even over the phone.

And those cries broke him more than anything. Even though they weren’t together anymore, he couldn’t just deny all what they had been, all the love they had shared.  
And they shared so much, they loved each other so much it hurt looking reality in the face, forced to accept it when all he wanted do to was wishing it was all a nightmare they just had to wake up from.

 

_I loved you more than anyone else_   
_I loved you, I loved you, I loved you_   
_Our “goodbye” on a day without stars_   
_When I woke up, I wished that it was all a dream_

Sometimes Yunho wishes he could be able to forget the past, deleting every broken memory in order to go on, but at the same time he realises he wouldn’t be able to do that because forgetting the past would mean to forget all the happiness his youth was full with. And he coudn’t do that. In the end, he didn’t even want to.  
His past was ok as it was, beautifully broken, and he wouldn’t change it with anything else.  
His past was what made him the man he was today.

_I want to forget_   
_But I’m not forgetting_

 

What he truly wishes for, however, is to be there. Despite the sufference they had to go through, despite the pain the other made him feel and the one he himself made the other feel, he wishes to be there.  
To be there in order to catch Jaejoong every time he’s about to fall.  
To be there in order to rock him and let him fall asleep feeling loved.  
To be there and wipe his tears away.  
To be there and protect him.  
And Yunho now finally understands what felt so wrong every time Changmin tried to protect him: he wasn’t used to that feeling because he never had to be protected, feeling stronger than ever with Jaejoong by his side.

 

_For your sake always_   
_I believed that for as long as I live,_   
_I’d sacrifice everything without regrets_   
_Standing by the most precious person to me_   
_I cannot always protect you_

When Yunho finishes the song, a new feeling grows inside him in the chilling air of the night, something Jaejoong felt too that night some years before. He just took longer to realise it.

Time will heal everything.

But time has already healed everything, they just didn’t notice it until now, he thinks, when, once in the backstage, he takes out his phone from his bag, pressing the numbers one after the other.  
And when the dial tone stops ringing and the sweetest voice asks who he is, he finds himself giggling like a teenage boy, his heart rushing and his hands trembling as he whispers those long unspoken words.

Theirs is a love like war, but they will come out as winners.

“I love you, Kim Jaejoong”.

 


	6. Things like

[2013]

****

** Things like **

Changmin had always been smart and since he was sixteen a day didn’t pass without him noticing things others didn’t seem to pay attention to. They were small things, unintentional actions, thoughts made words without people even realizing it. Things people usually forgot about and whom he didn’t seem able to let go, without even knowing why.

So once the good days were over and loneliness was the only thing he was left to deal with, he realized those small things were what made his life so beautiful, his youth so special. 

Things like Yoochun singing sweet ballads under the shower, most times out of rhythm, but full of a strange sense of lightness that made his boring evenings a little brighter. 

Things like Junsu challenging him at video-games, playing together until the night was dark and the tiredness of the day took over them, making them fall asleep on the sofa in the living room, only to wake up hours later with a warm blanket over them.

Things like Jaejoong wandering among the kitchen, whistling, humming or singing while cooking their dinners with the last energies left at the end of the day: dark circles under his eyes but a sweet smile always welcoming them.

Things like Yunho reassuring them before a big performance, a hand on their shoulders and encouraging words leaving his mouth, reaching their ears as blessings in the night air.

Things like waking up to Yunho’s unbelievable morning dance routines, like the annoying expression on Junsu’s face after one of their pranks, like Jaejoong’s full lips and red cheeks sneaking out from Yunho’s room, like Yoochun’s random English jokes or that feeling of carefreeness that seemed to disappear with the end of his youth.

Changmin knew he didn’t have to complain about his life, he knew there were people who lived far worse lives than his, but he couldn’t help thinking where all those small things had gone, wondering if maybe a little hope was all they needed to come back.


	7. Of goodbyes and new beginnings

[2015]

 

**Of goodbyes and new beginnings**

Before going to the military Kim Jaejoong decided he would have written letters, love letters to the people he cared about. They were sort of goodbye letters: emotions made words, regrets made new promises, old oaths renewed. Jaejoong was well aware of the fact that the people he addressed them to could have decided not to read them, but a small faith didn’t hurt, did it? Those broken goodbyes were all he had and the four people he wrote to were all he needed to go on.

The first letter he wrote was to Changmin.  
He hadn’t heard the younger guy in so long that he didn’t even know how to begin with. He spent hours debating on how to address the now-lost friend, how to call him after years of silence, until some time later he just decided to let the past go and talk to him in the same way they used to.

[My dear Changmin,

when you will receive this letter, I will have already enlisted.  
It’s cold today. I wonder what came through my mind when I decided to enlist in the middle of March: how crazy must I have been?  
You’re probably thinking “Of course you’re crazy” for this and for others reasons too, but I’ve always been so, haven’t I? You’re also surely struggling to know what the heck was I thinking when I decided to write to you after having no contact for almost six years, but here’s my point, kiddo: I am enlisting.  
And that means I’m 30 years old. And that also means I’ve already lived 1/3 of my life more or less.  
You’re very smart Changmin and by the time you will reach this point, you will have already caught the hidden message behind my words, but just in case something slips away from your focused eyes, my point is that I’m tired of letting my past mistakes and my pride come in between what is really important. And I do not want to start my new life after the military with regrets.  
So here I am, apologizing for those long lonely years and even though I know as well as you know that it was not totally my fault, I will take the blame for this, ‘cause I’m old and my shoulders are strong enough to carry it now.  
You don’t have to accept my hand. I will not force you. I’m giving you two years instead, two years to decide what to do about this letter and about our relationship in the future.  
I’m telling you that I’m willing to start over and that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for everything that happened, but people can’t always share the same views on life and that’s what makes life truly beautiful, I think. That’s what makes the world so various, cultures so interesting and even though the side effects of our opposite ideas were surely hard and unexpected, it is what makes us  _us_.  
I love you, Changmin, and I hope you will welcome this hyung in your life again.  
Life is too short not to make the best out of it.  
One touch!

_Kim Jaejoong]_

 

As soon as he finished the first letter, Jaejoong quickly realized that being light and tender and cheesy would have never been his thing. He was dark and complex and so odd to deal with. But it was good: not perfect, but good. Time would have worked it all out.

He decided to write the second letter to Junsu.

[My dear Junsu,

How are you doing? I’m enlisting soon.  
Well, by the time you will receive this letter, I will have probably already enlisted but we don’t care about details and you probably didn’t even notice, did you?  
Summer has just gone by. Well, again, not really  _just_  gone by as it’s already November, but this autumn mild weather kind of hid the transistional season. We should have gone to the sea and watched dolphines. Are there even dolphines here in Korea? I don’t know. And you probably don’t either.  
Am I making any sense ‘till now? Probably not, but you know I’m not really good with words.  
I just wanted  to tell you that I’m sorry I’ve been wrecked these last few years and I’m sorry I’ve taken so much of your time and energies when you probably needed them too. I’m sorry for taking Yoochun away from you sometimes, I know I’ve taken him for so long and relied on him too much. I’m sorry I borrowed both of his shoulders and didn’t let you any: we were all suffering and I was being selfish. I’m sorry, Junsu, I really am.  
I’m enlisting in some days, but when I’ll be back I’ll give you back your shoulder too. I will even offer you one of mine. We should share: isn’t everything better this way?  
I hope you will accept my support and I hope I will be strong enough to support you.  
I’m confident though: this new life will pay back for all our efforts and we will find happiness again. Trust your hyung on this.  
I wish you luck with your musicals and solo concerts.  
I love you, Junsu. I really do.

_Kim Jaejoong]_

 

Jaejoong felt better every word he wrote down and he felt the heaviness that had always weighted his heart get a little lighter. Speaking up was good. And healthy. And how come he hadn’t discover it sooner?  
Anyway, it was ok: everything was going to be ok from then on.

He went on his third letter and that was for Yoochun.

[My dear Yoochun,

When I was young and carefree and prettier, I didn’t believe in soulmates: I though they were just a romance thing for innocent children who still believed in fairytailes. However, now that I’m old and rational and not so pretty anymore, I’ve realised how wrong I had been. Soulmates do exist, they just don’t act the way people describe them to: they do not like the same things and do not always hit it off right away as well as they don’t fall in love under the rain. Sometimes, they don’t fall in love at all.  
But that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.  
They do. And we do. I do.  
I never thought I could be so close with someone to be able to know his feelings just by taking a glance at him. I never thought I would have had someone to hold me through the dark times, never letting me drown in my own emotions. I never thought I would have loved someone to the extent that I don’t care what they do, what they say, who they end up with, because I will love them, no matter what.  
I love  _you_  no matter what.  
The bare thought of going away for so long makes my heart tremble and my hands shaking, but I won’t show you this side of me anymore. Once I’ll be back, we will start anew: no more tears and no more cries, I promise. As I told Junsu and Changmin, we will all find happiness.  
But you know this already, don’t you? We’re soulmates: what I know, you know.  
I love you too much, Yoochun.

_Kim Jaejoong]_

 

Jaejoong looked at the wet spots on the letters and wondered if he’d better write it again but decided not to: Yoochun was his soulmate after all, he would have understood.

Jaejoong didn’t notice it, but the sky had turned dark along with his writings and small lights were now shining in the black ocean that was covering Seoul. He got up from his desk and decided to move to the balcony: the night always brought a fresh wind he was addicted to and he coudn’t help stargazing during the last hours of the day.  
He picked up his pen and started to write again. That letter was the hardest one; that, he knew.

[My dear Yunho,

I’m sorry.]

Jaejoong stopped for a second and wondered how many times he had said he was sorry. Probably too many,  but surely not enough.

[My dear Yunho,

I’m sorry.  
I don’t know why, but this is the first thing that came to my mind while writing this letter: I’m sorry.  
It’s hard to deal with the consequences of what happened and no “sorry” will ever take all the pain away, but that’s the only thing I can do from here. I know I shouldn’t even be here in the first place and again, I’m sorry.  
I’m not sorry for our decision, and even though I know you think it wasn’t the best choice, I also know that deep inside you have understood our reasons . We didn’t do it the best way, that’s for sure, and many people came in between us, many people were forced to take sides and I hate it, but at the same time I couldn’t do anything to prevent it.  
What I’m sorry for, however, is how I made you feel: I’m sorry for letting you think that you weren’t a good leader. You were. And you still are.  
Again, I know you think you’ve failed, but if my words still have any value, trust me when I say that without you we woudn’t have even made it to debut. You were there when we were feeling down, broken, and you held us together, you bare our pain, you defeate our nightmares and you connected our hands creating this beautiful bond we still feel attached to.  
You’re a great leader, Yunho, you don’t have to doubt it.  
And it’s ok to cry now, we’re almost at the end. You don’t have to endure it any longer. You can stop holding back. You can break down.  
I wasn’t strong enough to do so: I broke down along the way and I’m sorry for that too.  
But in the new life that will welcome us after these two long years of military service, I will be there and I won’t break down. There will be no reason to break down at all.  
I don’t know where all this faith is suddenly coming from and I must sound hilarious. God, I sound so hilarious even to myself. Maybe it’s because I had a few glasses of wine or maybe it’s because those five stars are shining so bright tonight that it’s almost a waste not to have faith in them. So trust me on this, Yunho: if you let me to, we will be ok.

Sometimes I wonder what brought us together, the five of us, me and you.  
Do you ever think about it? Would things have been the same if one of us hadn’t been  _one of us_? Would these feelings feel any different if Changmin, Junsu or Yoochun hadn’t been there? Would this stone I feel on my heart be any lighter if I hadn’t fell in love with you?  
I think so.  
But the point is: different doens’t mean better. And I cannot think of another way of feeling the things I feel for you all as I cannot think of another way of loving you. Of loving someone in the same heartbroken way I love you.  
It is almost an oxymoron to love someone in a heartbroken way, but we are all oxymoron, aren’t we?  
I loved you. And it was good, it was amazing. And it hurt too, it hurt so damn much.  
And I still love you and it’s still good and it still hurts, but I wouldn’t trade it with anything else.  
This is the way we are, this is the way we love and if it wasn’t like this, it wouldn’t be us.

I came to think that this was what this life, these first 30 years of our life, had to offer, and I’ve taken and accepted it. Now, as I’m walking the first steps of our new life I wonder what the future will have for me, for you, for the five of us. And even though I’m alone and a bit scared, I know that when I’ll come back all our sacrifices will pay back. I want to believe in this kind of future: life has already given us so much to overcome, so much pain to bare and so much tears to share.  
It’s time for happiness to come back again, I haven’t seen it in so long, and I truly hope that when we will meet it again, you will be standing there, by my side. Because I want  _you_  to witness it: the moment our lives will be as perfect as they used to be.  
And deep inside, I know you will be there.

In the meantime, I will be the first one to walk away, I will test the road and let you know where to pay attention to, where not to fall, where to watch out. You can pass the burden down: now it’s my turn to be a leader. I will wait for you, for the four of you, at the end of the line and believe me when I say that when you’ll finally find me, I will be smiling.

I love you, as I always have, and as I always will.

_Kim Jaejoong]_


	8. To be loved

[2015] 

 

**To be loved**

Park Yoochun was seventeen-years-old when he got to meet Kim Jaejoong for the first time. The guy was shy, big eyes hidden behind a way too long fringe, and didn’t speak a lot. He whispered a broken “Hello” and bowed politely before showing his back and walking away somewhere in the company.  
Yoochun thought it was because he was probably very young and kind of intimidated by the outside world, and he was very surprised some days later when he discovered that the guy was actually older than him.

He was cold, too: a frozen smile greeting him before the morning routines and an icy gaze following those that dared to look at him for a little bit too long. And he was confident, well aware of the power his voice held, conscious of all the possibilities that same voice would have opened for him in the near future.

However, soon enough Yoochun realised that his coldness was a just a shield to protect the incredible warmth he was treasuring inside, preventing others from taking advantage of it. He also realised that the confidence he used to show was nothing more than an armour to distract people from all his doubts and insecurities.   
He was strange, Kim Jaejoong, nothing common, that was for sure, but Yoochun didn’t let the walls he built around himself scare him away and he started to break them down one by one, until there was notihing more to fight and the pure essence of Jaejoong was looking right into his eyes. Naked. Unharmed.

It was 2004 and it was January when he got to touch the fire that was burning inside of him for the first time. He was tired, and worn out, and he was missing his family more than ever, feeling so alone in a country so far away from home. Life in the US wasn’t especially fun or incredibly happy, but his parents were there and his brother was there too, backing him up every time he was about to fall.  
Here in Korea, on the other hand, he had no one, and even though those four guys were starting to become a family, he didn’t really feel confortable to open up yet. That was until that winter night when Jaejoong opened the door of the room he had hidden himself into and saw himself crounched on the bed, eyes full and red from crying, He didn’t say a word in the silence that was floating between them, but walked the line that divided his feelings from the outside world, lingering a hand over his shoulder and hugging him tighly for hours. Yoochun had never had lots of friends, but in that moment, when the warmth of the guy in front of him started to melt his barriers too, he felt strangely at peace and he wondered if something so beautiful could really be his to hold.

Jaejoong used to smile a lot, but with time Park Yoochun managed to distinguish the different types of smiles he wore. There were the sincere ones, those he couldn’t hold back and always tried to hide behind the palm of his hand; they were usually answers to Yunho’s sappy humor or reactions to the fans’ messages and compliments. Then there were the fake ones, those where he didn’t show his teeth, but pressed his lips tight together, forcing his cheeks to raise against his own feelings. There was nothing to cover those smiles from, so he let most of the people see them and mistake them for true. He didn’t care at all.

Jaejoong was a falling star, he came to think one day: shining in the middle of the night, making people’s wishes come true, but broken and on the edge of falling apart too. He was a complex human being no one truly managed to understand. He was funny and easy to get along with once you knew him, but there was always that small part of his soul which his sadness owned and it was difficult to make him laugh once that part took over, it was difficult to put him to sleep when tears were all his eyes could see. When depression came alive, it was so tiring to fight it back that sometimes Yoochun wondered if they would have always had to, if the future coudn’t give them happiness alone.

Kim Jaejoong was a playboy too, breaking hearts here and there, but it wasn’t really his fault: his features were hyptnotizing and it was nearly impossible not to fall for him. His charms were amazing too, and that voice of his resembled that of mermaids coming out from the darkness of the ocean.

It wasn’t easy to stand by his side. _He_ wasn’t easy to begin with. But Park Yoochun had known that since the day they first met and it had never made him afraid: Kim Jaejoong was worth all the work.

By the time they reached the end of their 3rd decade, Yoochun could say he had understood 95% of his friend and he could now tell his mood from a single gesture, he could tell if he was depressed or angry or overexcited from a single word on the phone and he could totally read through that big doe eyes of his.

There was just this 5% he never really got the chance to know. It was so well hidden in between the labyrinths of his soul that Yoochun sometimes thought Jaejoong wasn’t really aware of it himself. It was the damned side of his character, where all his jelousy and insecurities came from, where his disappointments wouldn’t find peace, where all his fallen tears became an overflowed river. Nobody was allowed there, an insuperable gate blocking every entrance. It was the place that made him broken, the place that made him human.

It was just with time that Yoochun could wintness that place brighten, a small light fighting its way beyond the thick clouds until it was finally there, putting to sleep all the demons inside the guy’s soul. It wasn’t over _as it would probably never be_ but it was better.

And as he was sending a crying and drunk Jaejoong away to the military, hugging him tight at his farewell party, Yoochun wondered what was the reason behind his healing and couldn’t help but laugh softly when he came to the answer.

_Love_.  
Kim Jaejoong just wanted to be loved.


	9. Nine

[2009 - 2010]

 

**Nine**

 

1.

Yunho was lying on his bed that night: eyes closed and arms stretching between the blankets, trying in vain to catch some sleep. It had been a tiring day, full of meetings and fights and yelling, and he just wanted to hide himself in the dreams realm, but for some strange reasons he wasn’t managing to.  
It was past midnight when he received a message from an unknown number and listlessly he reached out his hand to check it.

The message contained a picture. It wasn’t in high quality and it took a while before Yunho could recognize the features of the street it contained. It was an alley behind the SM building: garbage spread everywhere at its sides, broken nightlights and poor buildings. He had used it sometimes in his training days, when he needed a shortcut for his part-time job, but he hadn’t seen the street in years.

There was something, however, that made the picture look vaguely familiar in a way he didn’t manage to explain. Something about its dim light and dark corners seemed to awake something else in his memory, but as he couldn’t figure out what it was, he guessed someone had just got the wrong number.

He deleted the message right after, but for some unknown reasons he decided to keep the picture.

 

2.

The second time Yunho received a message from un unknown number, he was with Heechul. They were laughing about a silly joke the older guy had just said, when his phone rang. They checked the text together and they were both as confused at the sentence they found written.

_It’s too cold to sleep outside, tonight.  
Take care._

They exchanged lost glances and wondered what the hell came through the sender’s mind: of course it was too cold, it was fucking November.

Yunho looked outside the window and saw it was snowing, small flakes were falling from the sky, whitening the city. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt run over by a strange sense of melancholy he couldn’t explain.

 

3.

Yunho was sitting on a chair in front of one of SM meeting rooms, when he received a message from an unknown number again. It was already the third time. He arched his eyebrows and checked it to see if it looked familiar, but as always the sequence of numbers didn’t ring any bell.  
He decided to open the message anyway, just to see what it said, but he found himself slightly out of place when he read the words it contained.  
It was a question, actually, followed by a short statement.

_Did you have any ramen tonight? It’s been a while._

Yunho struggled some moments trying to guess who the writer could have been, but when the manager called him in for the reunion and he still didn’t have any idea of who it could have been, he supposed someone had just got the wrong number and proceeded in deleting it soon after.

Surely, it was happening too many times to be random, but in that moment Yunho decided to just let it go.

 

4.

When Yunho received his fourth message from another unknown number, he decided something must have been pretty wrong. Enough was enough, and apparently somebody who had managed to get his number was having fun tormenting him. He decided to block the user, but he was shocked to realise that the four messages were from four different numbers.  
Something was off, that was for sure, but he couldn’t really understand what.  
Was it the same person? Or were they different ones?  
Were the messages linked?  
However, just as he was reading the latest one, he couldn’t manage to get the connection between them. They were just random questions and odd pictures, texts he guessed he wasn’t supposed to read, or if he was, he surely couldn’t read through.

_Cola or alcohol? I choose alcohol!_

But how could people get the numbers wrong so many times?  
How come he was the one they were always writing to?

 

5.

When the fifth message arrived, Yunho wasn’t even surprised anymore not to recognize the number it had come from. He sighed and read the text while waiting for the coffee to be ready.  
He was quite astonished to see the words it contained, though.

_First kisses are meant to be remembered forever, aren’t they?_

He unconsciously brought a finger to his mouth, touching his lower lip, and wondering once again about those strange messages he kept on receiving.

He suddenly remembered his first kiss too: a late autumn afternoon, a classroom, a girl he didn’t even liked that much. And he remembered his second first kiss too: an early winter morning, a bed room, a boy he happened to love too much.

Yunho let the memories flow away and deleted the message. How could be something so intimate being sent to someone it wasn’t addressed to?

 

6.

Yunho had been working hard those last few months, singing, and dancing, and exercising more then he had ever had. When he entered the apartment he still shared with Changmin, he didn’t wait a second and run straight to the bathroom, hiding himself under the warm feeling of the shower.

Peace was finally taking over his senses.

It wasn’t until later, when he finally came out of the shower, that he noticed a little blue light on his phone signalling that he had got a new message and as soon as he opened it, he couldn’t help sighing.

What was it, the sixth? Or was it the seventh unnkown number that had managed to crack his phone?

Yunho opened it and deleted it right after, shutting down the phone and falling asleep between the silk blankets.

A picture of the dreamed beaches of Bora Bora was lost somewhere in the cyberspace.

 

7.

It was February 5 when Yunho received the seventh message and as he opened it he wondered if they would have ever stopped. He hoped so. He had even changed number, but it turned out being useless as his phone kept on being cracked.  
The text was short, no smiles or little hearts. No emoticons either.

_Happy birthday._

The oddest thing was that it wasn’t even his birthday yet: few hours were still missing and he was sure none of his friends would have got it wrong. Not even the ones in different time zones.

However, an unexplainable feeling was still bothering him and the fact that he couldn’t understand what it was made him even angrier.

Those little texts were gonna drive him crazy.

 

8.

Yunho was visiting his sister Jihye when a whistle came from his phone welcoming him with another one of those mysterious messages he was starting to get obsessed with. There wasn’t anything specific he was actually mad at, as he didn’t know neither the sender nor the meaning they were hiding, but what was for sure was that they couldn’t be addressed to him. They just didn’t make any sense.

_Look at the stars tonight._

Yunho was starting to believe he had fallen into in some sort of dramatic teenage romance with an unknown girl from some distant land. Separated lovers, connected by the same sky, linked by the hope they had in their eyes when they were lost stargazing in the night.

As if his life wasn’t dramatic enough.

 

9.

Yunho hadn’t been receiving strange messages for quite a long time now, so when the phone suddenly vibrated in the middle of the film he was watching with Changmin in their small apartment in Japan, he was pretty surprised.

It was the ninth text and the guy decided they had to stop, he decided he had had enough. For real, this time. However, as soon as he read the only word it contained, he found himself puzzled. It wasn’t the same lost feeling he had felt while reading the other ones: well, the feeling was there, but there was something else too. Something that scared him and attracted it at the same time. Something about that word that he knew it had to ring a bell, but that he couldn’t quite get.

 _Nine_.

Nine, Yunho kept thinking. Nine what?  
Nine tales, like the mythological creature?  
Nine, as in the number of the album they were about to release?  
Nine what, he wondered again.

Yunho was about to retrieve his phone in one of his pockets, but he suddenly stopped himself when a conversation from such a long time ago came back to his mind, crashing his already broken present.

_“Where do you think we will be in nine years” Jaejoong had asked. It had been night, and they had been relaxing on the counch in the living room, playing games and chatting. His best friend had had his head on his lap, while he himself had been lying back with his eyes closed._

_“Nine years from now? Why do they have to be nine and not ten?” He had replied._

_“I don’t know, just answer”_

_Yunho hadn’t known what to say._  
“Honestly, I don’t know, but I hope we will still be friends in nine years”  
He had then passed a hand through his hair, combing them.

_“Best friends” Jaejoong had replied, relaxing under the touch._

_They had laid there for hours and Yunho had thought the older guy had finally fallen asleep when he had added “I will write you a song in nine years”  
“To our friendship” he had whispered and Yunho hadn’t known yet that friendship wasn’t really what Jaejoong had been talking about._

Nine years.

Yunho could feel his eyes getting teary as he looked at his phone again and traced the imaginary line that linked all those messages he had been receiving for the past months.  
He breathed out loudly. Once, twice, three times. But air didn’t seem willing to reach his lungs.  
He coughed and was trying to calm himself down, when Changmin got closer.

“You ok hyung?” he asked, obviously worried.

“I’m not” he answered. No need to lie.  
He breathed again, deeply, before making a request Changmin swore he had never thought the other guy would have ever made.  
“Call Jaejoong” he said, the words coming out in broken whispers from his troubled lungs.

“What?”

“Call. Jaejoong.” he repeated, articulating every word.

He could suddenly see the line clear right in front of him, connecting every memory he had shared with him.

The corner in the dark alley where they had first met. The bridge they had slept under during so many freezing nights. The ramen shop where they used to eat in their training days. Jaejoong fainting because of drinking too much cola and his raising addiction to alcohol. Their first kiss which neither of them had managed to forget. Bora Bora and their fake honeymoon where even though they hadn’t been married, they had managed to enjoy their relationship in its richness. Their birthday, as in the day that divided the two of them, as in the only full day they had lived in different worlds. And nine, as in the song Jaejoong had promised to write.

Nine years of memories rushed to his mind from the deepest corners of his soul.  
Nine years of love and hate and fights.  
Nine years of struggling, of working, of compromising.  
Nine years of Kim Jaejoong in every shape he could be taken.

When Changmin handed him the phone, he grabbed it with every little strength he had and when the dialing tone finally stopped, he said the only thing he could have said.

“Where do you think we will be in nine years?” He asked, trying to suppress his silent sobs.

Jaejoong held his breath on the other end of the line and thought about his words carefully.

“I will still be waiting for you”

Yunho didn’t speak for minutes but he knew Jaejoong wouldn’t just hang up. Not before hearing his answer.

“I” he started, uncertain, before clearing his voice.

“I will still be loving you”


	10. A room full of dreams

** A room full of dreams. **

 

Junsu didn’t know how it started, but by the time he was 30, he realised he had a room in which he had been storing his most precious things through time. It was a small storeroom, right beside the entrance, in which he had been treasuring little objects, old photographs, new musical posters; it was a room in which he came to think, to reflect, to make big decisions. He was used to sitting in the middle and look around, tracing the imaginary line that brought that little kid who loved to sing to the man he was today.

In the small room, there was a videogame.  
There was no tv, no computer, but the empty cover stood there, on one of the several shelves, reminding him of sleepless nights spent playing with Changmin until they were both too tired to press the buttons and fell asleep with the game still going on.

In the small room, there was a football ball too.  
It was red, covered with golden signatures and cute designs. It reminded him of Yunho and that passion they shared for sports besides the one for singing and dancing. It reminded him of long lost matches and broken laughs, of tiring training days and warm embracing hugs.

In the small room there was also an album.  
It was the beginning of a new career, it was the weapon he and Jaejoong and Yoochun had fought against SM with. It was the first of the many versions that had to be released because of an unfair envioronment, because of mother nature law of how power defies justice.

In the small room, there was a picture too.  
It was old and his corners were either ruined or about to be torned out, but there was something about it that made it impossible for Junsu to throw it away. There was something about the way it always managed to reassure him in uncertain situations, something about the happiness the people on it used to feel that made him willing to hope those feelings weren’t lost forever. 

In the small room there were lots of things.  
There was a ticket from his first musical, Mozart!, his first concert tour dvd and a bright trophy from one of the achivements gained as Dong Bang Shin Ki.  
There was a matched ring he and his twin brother bought together years ago, his FC men t-shirt and pillars of his favourite singers’ cds.  
There was a box of polaroids that belonged to other times, a stuffed dolphin and many other items that had had role too important in his past to be set aside.

Junsu didn’t know why he had started collecting things, maybe it had been his way to hold memories when his mind was too busy fighting a reality it didn’t want to treasure them. Maybe it had been his way to remember where he came from, a way not to forget all these little things that had forged a part of his personality, that had helped him turn his flaws into his values.

In some way that small room had become his safe place, his refuge.  
It was a time machine that allowed him to travel back in time to the times he desired the most.

Hidden in the middle of a damned society, it was, indeed, his room full of dreams.


	11. What love is about

[2018]

****

** What love is about **

****

When Changmin was asked what love was about, the first thing that came to his mind was a late summer morning in a house by the sea. He was eight at the time, but he had already catched something peculiar and beautiful in the looks his parents exchanged, in the way his father used to wake up hours before them to prepare breakfast or in the smiles his mother used to give him once she woke up to the smell of coffee.  
He saw the hint of something he sweared he wanted to experience and treasure for as long as he could.

When Changmin was asked what love was about, the second thing that came to his mind was music. Since he was a child, he had always enjoyed the colorful notes made words in a combination of sounds so appealing. He loved the way singers managed to make people smile and cry through lullabies of feelings revealed from the depths of their souls.   
When he discovered that his own voice had something to offer too, Changmin sweared he would have make a living out of it.

When Changmin was asked what love was about, Kim Jaejoong also came to his mind.  
Kim Jaejoong wasn’t someone simple to talk about, his psyche was so complexed that Changmin was sure he wasn’t even able to understand it himself. He was a mix of different feelings, contrasted opinions, opposite behaviors. He was a living oxymoron, a hurricane of broken emotions, a storm of happiness and tears that walked into your life and in some ways managed to make you feel addicted to it.   
That he was: an addiction.  
However, there was one thing Changmin was certain about the guy: love. Love was what Jaejoong lived on, what he breathed, what he gave, what he needed to go on, and that’s why when he was asked about it, he wasn’t surprised at the connection his mind had made.

Kim Jaejoong and love were enemies: they fought badly and hurt each other in places so deep, Changmin was surprised they could actually be reached. Love was Jaejoong’s worst nightmare: it followed him everywhere and tormented him until the guy was left with nothing more to offer.  
He lived on love. He needed love.   
It was the air he breathed, the food he eated.  
And sometimes, unluckily lots of times, love wasn’t kind enough to him the way he was with it. He got destroyed by love, Kim Jaejoong, so many times that Changmin wondered if it was even worth it. He remembered drying away waterfalls of never ending tears to see a smile decorate the guy’s face once again, only to be taken away a while later, defeated by another broken love.

However, Kim Jaejoong and love were lovers too: they cared so much and lost themselves in each other, reaching places so deeply hidden in their souls, Changmin was surprised they could actually be touched.   
When Kim Jaejoong fell in love, he fell hard.   
And he loved damn hard. He loved with all he had, with every breath his lungs had to offer, with every drop of energy in his veins, with every heartbeat his body managed to give life to.  
Kim Jaejoong wasn’t easy to love. He was a burden to carry, a riddle to solve, a challenge to face.  
However, for Kim Jaejoong to love was easy. And he showed it in every gesture, in every word, in every look: a reassuring touch on the shoulder, a “fighting” whispered before an important concert, a constant gaze following your every move as to be sure that everything was in the right place.

Changmin was 30 and had experienced love many times during his life.   
He loved his family. And Yunho. And his friends.   
He loved music. And his fans. And his job.  
He loved books too. And their stories. And their lessons.

However there was one thing he still had to experience and it was a love like Jaejoong’s.  
A love that made you feel completed. And treasured. And accepted with your imperfections.  
A love that left you broken. And lonely. And unable to go on.  
A love that made you feel the world in all its colors.

But Changmin was afraid that that kind of love would have never been his; it was a kind of love only someone as wildly broken and fearless as Kim Jaejoong could have ever had the opportunity to feel.


	12. Strangers in the night

[2001]

 

**Strangers in the night**

Jung Yunho is barely fifteen-years-old, something more than kid, but in spite of his young age he is already a man of principles.   
He was born catholic and follows the values he was taught as strongly and deeply as he follows his passions.   
He listens to his parents well enough and if we pretend not to count that time he told them to screw off, that he wouldn’t have applied for law school, but that he would have followed his dream instead, he never argues with them.  
He helps the other trainees with their dances, despite knowing that those same guys are the ones that could take his place in the final evaluations. He knows his dancing is all he can rely on, but still, looking at the shutter teenagers crying out their tears in the empty training rooms, he cannot stop himself from helping.  
He also doesn’t smoke more than a few cigarettes per week as well as he doesn’t drink more than a few beers the nights they’re strong enough to crash into some pubs.  
He doesn’t do drugs either.  
He doesn’t sleep around.  
And for sure, he doesn’t fall in love.   
Love is actually the last thing he wishes for at the moment. It isn’t what he wants, neither what he needs: he wants fame and he needs to work hard for that, day and night. Period.

Jung Yunho, however, is just a fifteen-years-old boy dreaming the big life while sleeping under the bridges in the freezing nights of Seoul and doesn’t know that love isn’t something you can control. He doesn’t know that love happens unexpectedly, that it comes without warnings and catches you startled, unprepared, helplessly lost in a new hurricane of feelings.

And that’s exactly what happens one night around the half of November, when the sky is already dark but still let you notice the little snowflakes raining down on the city.   
He’s with his friend Junsu and they’re getting out of the SM building after another full day of practise. He’s tired and worn out and wants nothing more than laying down on the hostel bed and sleeping through the night. However, as soon as they walk beyond their favourite ramen shop, they suddenly hear a scream breaking the silence of the night. They turn and run and stop right in front of a group of people: there are five of them, dressed in black, with caps and backpacks and all those gangster stuff, and for a moment Yunho thinks of running away. But then he hears that scream again and notices another figure hidden between the taller ones, dressed in white and covered in snowflakes.  
And Yunho suddenly can’t breath.   
He doesn’t know why, but he cannot stop looking at that ethereal face, at those unnatural big eyes folded in a fierce expression that doesn’t seem to belong to them. He stares at those lips, red and full on the guy’s silky complexion, at his black hair melting together with the colours of the night.  
Junsu is pulling his shirt, telling him that it’s better that they go away, that they cannot risk getting in troubles, but Yunho doesn’t hear him, all he can think about is the small teen fighting in the circle with his fists closed and his voice high. He’s talking about some idol group he doesn’t want people to insult and Yunho almost finds hilarius how he’s willing to risk getting beaten up to protect someone that doesn’t even know he exists. The kid has values, he somehow concludes. And maybe it’s exactly because he has them and because Yunho is a man of principles that he cannot help himself from getting by his side and facing the big group.

“What do you want kid?” one of the guys ask seeing him join the circle.

“Just let him go” he says, placing a hand in front of him in a protecting way, and speaking with a confidence he doesn’t feel confident about. “He wasn’t serious. And it’s late. Just let us go” he adds then. However, he doesn’t look a day over fifteen himself and he is well aware that there is no way the others are letting them go away without a fight.

“Look, another kiddo playing wild” one of them replies, laughing.  
“We’re gonna have a full meal tonight” another one adds.

Yunho analyses the situation carefully but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that they don’t stand a chance. They overnumber them by three people, not to mention that they are older, and bigger, and stronger for sure. He quickly sends a glance through the background, spotting Junsu hidden behind a building nearby, praying him to just run away.

Yunho had already thought about that: he’s fast and less equipped and he probably knows the neighbourhood better than they do, but what he doesn’t know is if the guy can run and he can’t solve the equation without that small detail.

As soon as he notices the others talking between them, joking about their skinny appearances and about how they should beat them up, he dares to ask. It’s their only chance anyway.

“Can you run?” he whispers, ghosting his hand over his chest and registering the guy’s incredible warmth.

The small contact doesn’t seem to bother him as he slightly turns his head, raising his gaze so that he can meet Yunho’s in the least suspicious way.   
“I can” he whispers in reply, his voice soft against the cold weather.  
Which actually turns out to be the most suspicious one.

“What are you talking about freak?” the one who appears to be the leader states, getting closer and closer until Yunho decides it’s their moment and hopes his taekwondoo lessons will show some results as he kicks one of the guys beside him, opening them a way. He also hopes the surprise element will give them some advantage.

“Now!”

Yunho runs with every strenght left in his body and speeds among the dark alleys hoping someone is watching them from above and decides to give them some luck.  
He turns behind only once, just to see if the guy can actually run and he’s slighlty amused to find him right behind him. What he didn’t expect, however, is to notice that the others aren’t far behind either.   
He starts thinking wild again; he knows they cannot run forever, but they can’t confront them either.

He suddenly comes to a solution as soon as they cross one of the main streets and end up in some secondary ones. He knows there’s a small convenience store there which happens to have an even smaller backyard you can enter from the outside without too many difficulties. He decides to go for it and right after they turn into the said street, he slows down enough to grab the guy’s wrist, pulling him closer and sneaking together inside the microscopic place; they should have enough advantage for their sudden disappearance not to seem too unrealistic.

Yunho quickly aligns the guy’s body with his, so that their figures manage to remain hidden by the garbage bins near the entrance, and covers the guy’s mouth with his hand so that his surprised gulps will not be heard. His breath his hot against his fingers and he suddenly feels something warm growing inside his stomach, but he blames it on the run and the fear of getting discovered.

They hear the group approaching, cursing and kicking, and then they can hear their voices slowly fading away, but some minutes still pass before Yunho decides that they are safe and lowers his worried gaze from the streets to the guy’s face again. Now that they are so close he notices things he hadn’t before, like that mole on his left cheek, his way too long eyelashes or that small birthmark right under his chin. He is wandering among those beautiful little details when he feels a slight movement under his hand and realises the guy is looking back at him, smiling, and now his eyes are smaller and a little squeezed, and his cheeks stretched with a faint dimple decoring one of them.

Yunho doesn’t know what’s happening, he doesn’t know how to call that feeling that’s growing inside of him, he doesn’t know how to name that sense of warmth and peacefulness he suddenly feels on his heart. What he knows, however, is that a storm of butterflies is eating his stomach alive and he swears he can feel them one by one as they make their way to his chest and then go further and reach his arms and legs, just to go further again and melt with his toes and fingers too.

Yunho doesn’t know what to say, neither what to do, so he just decides to move his hand away and go for a “Hey”, followed shortly by a random “What’s your name?”, hoping not to sound too dumb.

The guy chuckles and raises a hand covering his smile and Yunho would just like to tell him not to cover it, that he looks so precious, shining in the darkness of the night, but he strangely refrains himself from doing so.

“Jaejoong” he answers soon after, “Kim Jaejoong”.  
“What’s yours?”

Yunho realises his voice is amazing too: sweet and a little hoarse from all the screaming, but yet so incredibly melodic. And right then Yunho also knows that he’s gone. He knows that that’s a name he won’t easily forget, he knows that that’s a guy he won’t easily let go of.  
Yunho is a man of principles, but in that moment he doesn’t deny himself from falling in love. He welcomes the feelings, instead, because somehow he is completely sure that Kim Jaejoong will be worth it.

“Yunho” he answers, finally smiling too, “Jung Yunho”

 

***

 

Yunho has never believed in fate, but as he enters the SM building some days after, and finds Jaejoong sat on the floor of one of the training room, leg crossed listening to some music, he starts questioning all his values again.

He stops on his place for several minutes, unable to move or think, completely mesmerized by the figure in front of him, before slowly crossing the room and sliding down beside him.

“Hey” he greets.

Jaejoong is obviously surprised and as he raises his eyes to check who it is, Yunho swears he can see stars inside them. A smile suddenly breaks on his face as he recognizes him.

“Hey” he answers back, his voice a little bit too high.

For some reasons they do not talk about what were the chances of meeting again, most of all in one of the biggest music companies in the country; they just let it go and focus, instead, on the sounds of their racing heartbeats so strangely on rhythm, on the smell of sweat and energy drinks now so weirdly romantic as well as on that familiar chemistry they feel floating between them.

“Can I borrow one?” Yunho then asks, pointing to the earphones both still in the other’s ears.

“Sure” Jaejoong chuckles in response, offering the small object.

And as he takes it from his hand and slowly brings it to his ear, laying back against the wall and a little to the other’s side, shoulders touching and knees brushing lightly, Yunho suddenly thinks that it did turn out so right, for strangers in the night.


	13. Together? Together.

[2003 – 2018]

 

**Together?  
 _Together_.**

 

It’s a chilly autumn morning and Jaejoong has just entered the SM building when he’s suddenly dragged by his coordi noona in one of the training rooms in the basement. He’s told to sit and wait and so he does: he sits and waits, and waits again. Minutes pass and the hand of the clock has turned at least ninty degress before another kid enters the room.

Jaejoong knows him, he has seen him sometimes around the building; he’s the _American_.  
He cannot quite recall his name, though. Not that he cares anyway.

Jaejoong shifts on the ground unconfortably. He was supposed to be in his vocal rehearsal with Yunho that morning, but he somehow ended up trapped with that spaced-out foreigner in a room under the ground.

Before he’s given the chance to complain, however, the guy’s coordi speaks up.

“You wait here too, Yoochun”

Yoochun, he suddenly remembers: that was the name.  
He steals a glance from the guy and notices his features are all a little bit too much: his hair a little bit too long, his eyes a little bit too deep, his shoulders a little bit too broad. Jaejoong doesn’t know what to think of him yet.

The guy simply nods and politely bows to her, before she disappears behind the door. He then stretches his arm, raising his grey hoodie and reavealing the bare skin of his torso, and sits down beside him. Jaejoong thinks he’s also a little bit too close and slightly moves away.

“I’m not gonna eat you, you know that right?” he asks, noticing his movements.

“I know” he somehow breathes out, his annoying tone covering the shyness of his soul. “I was just unconfortable”.  
As soon as he speaks, however, he doesn’t fail noticing the hurt expression on the guy’s face and somehow he decides that shyness is still better than being unfriendly (and than being a jerk too).

He raises a hand and offers it in his direction.  
“I’m Kim Jaejoong” he adds, looking somewhere past him.

Yoochun smiles and squeezes his hand.  
“I know” he laughs “I’m Park Yoochun”

“What do you mean _you know_?” he suddenly asks, a confused expression decorating his ethereal face.

Yoochun laughs again and Jaejoong realises his laugh is really contagious, and pure, and funny. And a little bit too loud, but he keeps it to himself.

“Eveybody knows you, Kim Jaejoong: amazing singer, but clumsiest kid ever. Is there a place in this building you haven’t fallen on?”

Jaejoong can feel his face burning and he’s about to die from embarassment when they are suddenly interrupted.

“Guys!” someone screams, entering the room, “Stand up!”

They both fall silent after that and obey the young man who is now imparting orders: “Warm up”, “Set the stereo”, “Close the door”. He looks to his side to catch the other’s reaction, but Yoochun is not looking at him.  
“I’m gonna be your vocal instructor from now on” he announces somewhere along his list of orders.

Saying that he’s surprised is an euphemism: Jaejoong is completely astonished and his raised eyebrows and big eyes totally reveal it. He loved his past teacher, he was nice to him and didn’t yell when he was tired or when his throat was sore and couldn’t reach high notes; he really didn’t want to change him.  
It takes so much to get used to new people and Jaejoong doesn’t really like changes.

“What about our old ones?” he tries to argue.

“You will not need them anymore” the guy quickly answers, destroying every possibility of going back. “You’re gonna debut soon. Together. So we need to work, you know, together” he states, pointing back and forth between the two confused trainees.

Jaejoong’s already big eyes double in size as he stares at the instructor’s face, still not truly understanding his words.  
Debut? That was so far away.  
But debut with Yoochun? That sounded even more improbable.  
They had just met after all.

“Together?” he asks again.

“Yeah, _together_ ” Yoochun replies, having waken up from his trance, “Haven’t you heard him?” he asks then, turning and giving him a light punch on the shoulder.

“Yeah Kim Jaejoong, are you deaf now?”  
Jaejoong would like to ask how the guy knows his name, but then again he is an instructor which means he probably has a list of all the trainees’s names. He still hasn’t properly introduced himself, though, and Jaejoong finds it slighty rude. He also would like to spit in the face of the so called instructor that he had already been in more than five projects which then turned into ashes, so forgive him if he didn't believe in debut anymore.

“Anyway” he continues “Some guys are gonna join us in some minutes. You’re gonna debut as a five-boys-group and we need to work on your harmonization”

Is with those words that Jaejoong and Yoochun understand what’s really happening and realise that there is no joke. That they are really gonna debut. That they are really gonna become stars.  
They turn and face and share a look for the first time:  they look into each other’s eyes and despite the weird situation the have suddenly found themselves into, they find their own dreams reflected in the other’s eyes. They both see a big stage, a screaming crowd and soft melodies filling the air. They both see warm smiles, shared laughs and hands holding on to each other.  
Hidden behind the other’s pupils, they both see a stranger becoming a friend, becoming a brother and can’t help smiling at the strange awkardeness of their present.

In the cold basement of that old autumn morning, Jaejoong and Yoochun build the basement of their friendship, the basement of that relationship that would have linked and supported them for the years to come.

 

***

 

Yoochun  is lying on the grass of the majestic island of Bora Bora, his gaze lost among the stars, when Jaejoong joins him, a couple of beers in his hands.

He lays down beside him and pass him a can; “Have it” he says.

Yoochun grabs it without looking and sips the golden liquind down his troat. It’s bitter, but he somehow came to like it. Cheap bears were all they could get drunk on anyway.

“What are you staring so intensly at?” Jaejoong then asks, trying to catch the immensity the other was finding in the sky.

Yoochun wasn’t really focusing on the sparkling dots, he was just using the mesmerizing background as a canvas where to paint his thoughts.  
He was thinking of his family: of his parents and his twin brother who he hadn’t seen in months and who he missed like a second soul. The group was becoming his new family and they helped him adapt to the new reality which soon became a routine, but nobody understood him like his brother and he missed that familiarity, he missed being read just by a simple glance.  
He was thinking of his future too, of how their new singles were selling, of how they would soon become somebody in the country, a role model for younger kids just how so many had been to him. He liked the thought of being useful to somebody, of having the power of changing something, of making someone else’s life better.

“Nothing” he just replies “I was just thinking. It was quite here, no one talking” he says.  
“You know, before you came” he then adds, giving him a light punch on the shoulder.

“Bad for you then!” he quickly answers.

Jaejoong laughs and Yoochun drifts his thoughs to the sound that’s know breaking his confortable silence. He loves hearing the older guy’s laugh, it sounds so free, so beautiful, so warm. Maybe it’s because Jaejoong is a little bit drunk, he doesn’t know, but the sound somehow melts with the magical noises of the island, with the light breeze whispering between the trees, with the roaring waves smashing against the rocks. Yoochun realises there wasn’t silence before either, but the intensity of his thoughts had blocked away everything from his mind.

“Jaejoong” he calls then, grabbing his free hand.

“Uhm” the other replies, the empty can of beer left somewhere by his side.

“I love you” Yoochun chuckles. “And Junsu. And Changmin. And Yunho too.”

“Uhm” he replies again, feeling his mind wandering among the memories of the last few days. “Me too” he then adds, “But I love Yunho more than you do”

Yoochun smiles one of his kindest mind and gets closer, placing his head over the guy’s right shoulder.

“Jaejoong” he calls again, squeezing his hand.

“Uhm”

“We will be together forever, right?”

Jaejoong nods, his eyes still closed, dozing off to the night.

“Yeah, _together_ ”.

 

***

 

Jaejoong is sitting in the backstage of the concert hall, hands still on his knees and feet knocking the ground, bouncing his head at the same rhythm: he’s nervous.  
Rationally, he knows there’s nothing to be nervous about: it’s not his first concert, nor the most important one they have ever done, but subconsciously he still shivers. It’s the first whole concert in which he hasn’t got the other four by his side and he feels stupid to think of it, but their presence has always given him some kind of secret support that has always helped him reach the higher notes.

He suddenly feels alone, even though he knows he shouldn’t be: Yoochun is still there, still filling his right side and that somehow reassures him. He smiles, unconsciously: Yoochun has always been there.

They’re like brothers, Yoochun and him, even though they have no blood relations.  
They fight a lot: with screams and kicks and punches, sometimes.  
But they make peace a lot too: with soft kisses and hugs and big smiles.  
They care a lot. And they love a lot.  
Sometimes, Jaejoong thinks he loves him more than he loves himself, but Yoochun always says not to think that, that Jaejoong should think he is important too, that he should be aware of the goodness of his own self, so Jaejoong never says that aloud anymore.  
He still thinks so, though. Yoochun is so easy to love.

They’re different, but not opposite different.  
One could say they’re more similar than different.  
If he was to compare them, they would be like melody and harmony, two sides of the figure that work together in order to create something new: like melody and harmony create music, like different sides build a polygon.

That’s why they chose it as the name for their new single anyway.

He’s still absorbed in his flow of thoughts when Yoochun arrives: he’s in hurry and his styled hair is now completely messy now, but that’s not important tonight: their voices are.

Jaejoong stops his movements to look at the other guy, searching for the same old reassurment in his words.

“Together?” he asks, uncertain, extending his hand.

“ _Together_ ” Yoochun assures him, pulling him up and squeezing his hand a little.

 

***

 

Jaejoong is lying on his side of the bed in the hotel room he shares with Yoochun. It’s late in the night and no moonray has managed to filter into the dark room whose features are barely recognizable. There is no sound either, except for the guy’s light snorts.

Jaejoong thinks about the reality he has suddenly found himself into: the controversy of their contracts, the quarrels, the fights, contrasted opinions turning into a lawsuit and Yunho and Changmin’s hands impossibly further and further away. He thinks about the past, about those long six years now turned into ashes on the burning wounds of their crashed present, about those smiles which used to give him peace, but that now hurt over the scarred skin of his heart.

Jaejoong doesn’t know who to blame anymore, and he wonders if their choices have been worth it, if they’ll ever be worth the price they are paying. He feels warm tears rolling down his cheeks in another one of those sleepless nights that don’t seem willing to let him go lately.

“Yoochun-ah” he whispers to the darkness, “Yoochun-ah” he repeats in sobs, unable to stop.

“Yoochun-ah I’m scared” he says once again, his words broken sounds distorting the silence.

“Yoochun-ah”

“Yoochun-ah”

“Yoochun-ah”

Yoochun wakes up to the light noise of suppressed moans filling the room. He turns around, facing the other side and finding a pair of red eyes staring back at him, sullen and full of doubts and hyphotetical regrets.

“Yoochun-ah I don’t want to suffer anymore” Jaejoong cries out, another waterfall flowing down his ethereal face.

Yoochun slowly wraps his arms around the other’s waist as he’s so used to do, and brings him closer, hoping for the tight embrace to erase all his pains. He secretly wishes for his own wounds to be healed too.

“You’re not alone, Jaejoong” he softly answers, hugging him tighter, “I won’t let you alone in this”.  
Yoochun know they are both suffering an incredible amount of pain and he knows people might consider Jaejoong unfair for his way of relying on others so much, but Yoochun also knows Jaejoong is the one who has lost the most with the choices they’ve made.  
He has lost two bandmates, as all of them, but he has lost a boyfriend too.  
He has lost the person he loved the most, the person who made all their days a little bit less tiring, a little bit brighter.  
But most of all, he has lost his reason to live, his reason to go on.  
Yoochun also knows that he doesn’t regret it, but what’s for sure is that facing the consequences of their actions isn’t an easy task to fulfill. What’s for sure is that none of them had foreshadowed this amount of sufference.

“Together?” he hears Jaejoong asking, tilting his head a little higher.

He looks back into that pair of doe eyes that seems to have the whole world hidden behind them and forces himself to smile a little, at least for tonight.

“ _Together_ ”.

 

***

 

Yoochun is sat in the middle of an empty room, trying to empty the mess of his heart and mind.  
He needs emptiness.  
He needs it in order to forget about the chaos that’s raging on beyond those closed curtain, about the clicks and flashes of cameras, about the screams of journalists, about the smashing sound of the hammer in the tribunal.  
He needs emptiness.  
He needs it in order to replace his troubled feelings with an effimeral sense of peace, in order to calm down his flows of thoughts before they become a danger for his own life.

Yoochun has never thought about suicide. Even in his darkest times, when the pain seemed impossible to be dealt, when the joys of singing were lost forgotten in a cloud of thick schedules, orders and people he was supposed to appeal, to be grateful to, even then, he never thought about suicide.

However, as he finds himself stuck in an empty room, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think, he considers the idea for the first time.

Yoochun would have also never thought that words could hurt so much, but as he finds himself stuck in the middle of a crowd defining him as a molester, as a raper, unable to get away, he feels the words reaching his heart as sharp knives.

In the middle of an empty room, Yoochun lies on the floor and closes his eyes, listening to the drops of rain knocking on the windows. He wonders how much time they would need to drown the whole room. He wonders how darker they would turn if mixed with the devilish colour of his blood.

He needs help, along with emptiness. He knows it.  
He needs support, and reassurement, and strong arms holding him up during his fight. But Yoochun is too tired to fight, he has done it for so long and he doesn’t seem to have the strenght to do so anymore.

Dying would be so easy, instead.  
One single bullet.  
Some drops of cyanide.  
A brief jump over the balcony.  
It is so easy people don’t even realise it.  
He could die right now, and nobody would notice it before hours.  
He could die, and nobody would actually care.

A sudden whistle, however, wakes him up from the dephts of his thoughts and as he brings out his phone, a new message welcomes him.

“ _Together_ ”.

Yoochun cries reading the new text which he knows being more than a simple text: it’s a reminder of who he is and of who still believes in him. It’s a weapon to fight with. It’s an answer to un unsaid question whispered to the silence of the night, but that came loud and needy to Jaejoong’s ears and soul.

“Together?”  
  


***

 

When Jaejoong thinks about the word together, he thinks of shared beers and clubs, of warm Christams’ sweaters and hot chocolate, of soft smiles and low pitched songs. He thinks of a second soul tattoed on his skin, of strong arms ready to catch him when he’s falling, of light kisses stamped on his forehead, the shape of a pair of lips almost visible.

“Together?”

When Yoochun thinks about the word together, he thinks of cocktails and pubs, of fashion clothes and tea, of warm hugs and high pitched songs. He thinks of a peculiar kind of heart that’s always more willing to give than to take, of soft hands ready to hold him, of sweet lullabies whispered throught the night.

“ _Together_ ”.


	14. Reaching out to you

[2011]

 

**Reaching out to you**

 

Shim Changmin has never been the affective kind of guy: he doesn’t hug people all the time, he doesn’t whisper goodnight wishes as well as he doesn’t hold hands with his friends. He likes his own space and he doesn’t like his little world to be invaded, crowded by people he doesn’t feel comfortable enough with. From the outside, sometimes, that might look like he’s being mean, cold, even angry, when in reality he’s just defending his little home like a hermit crab defends its shell.

Shim Changmin has never been the emotional kind of guy either: he doesn’t cry easily, he doesn’t fall in love easily as well as he doesn’t give emotions the importance others would, avoiding to name those feelings he realizes being too difficult to deal with. Some might say he’s a coward, that he should face his own weaknesses, but he has always found it easier and less complicated to just let emotions go and develop and grow and change and come back to him in different shapes: new, lighter, and more easily accepted.

However, there is a moment in his life in which Shim Changmin finds himself helpless, vulnerable for the first time in front of a new emotion that starts growing inside of him day after day, unchanging through time, and that rebels against himself from that same little home he had tried so hard to protect.  
Shim Changmin doesn’t know how to address this new feeling, he doesn’t know how to name that sense of emptiness and longing he feels gripping over his heart, he doesn’t know how to explain that feeling of missing something that keeps chasing him everywhere now.  
Shim Changmin doesn’t know what to do with this new reality he has suddenly found himself into, this new world in which everything gets stuck with him, everything awakes emotions and memories, everything gives life to flows of never-ending thoughts that keep him awake making his nights sleepless — until one day he just knows.

It happens quickly and unexpectedly, and Shim Changmin suddenly understands the simple logic of life that he had always been avoiding, he suddenly realizes the reason his emotions were working ok until one day they just weren’t anymore.

Shim Changmin is walking with his dear friend Yunho: it’s a lazy Sunday morning in Japan, and they’re walking through the streets of the capital city, enjoying the warm weather of the newly born spring. They’re walking together until a car passes by them, a little bit too close, and Shim Changmin loses his balance and falls down ungracefully, Yunho’s scream raising in the background. It’s when he’s on the ground, knees scratched and hands hurting from the sudden fall, and about to get up, that a thought crosses his mind, revealing a whole new world he had unconsciously tried to suppress, revealing the reason why his emotions had suddenly changed at random moment in his life — which was not so random after all.  
  
_He shouldn’t have been on the external side of the sidewalk._  
  
He should have stayed on the internal one.  
That’s what Jaejoong had always told him at least. That’s what Jaejoong had always done when they were going out together: he would’ve taken his hand and he would’ve moved him to his right, bragging about how kids shouldn’t stay near cars, how it was too dangerous. And Shim Changmin would’ve let go of that same hand, bragging back about how he was not a kid anymore and how he could take care of himself, but he would’ve remained on the side he had been sent to. And Jaejoong would’ve smiled under his long fringe, he would’ve folded those red lips of his upwards and he would’ve suppressed a giggle behind his hand.  
Shim Changmin is still on the ground and he can still hear Yunho’s talking, now closer and on his same level, asking if he’s ok, if he has got hurt.  
And Shim Changmin suddenly can’t breathe, his hands start to tremble and he feels his eyes burning and his cheeks getting wet, while he allows himself to break down for the first time in a very long time. Yunho’s face is stricken with worry when the guy looks at him, and for the first time he allows himself to be the affective and emotional guy he has never been. For the first time, he admits the feelings he feels exploding inside and he faces those same feelings, finally managing to name them, finally managing to find in them the answer to all his unspoken questions.  
They’re nostalgia.  
A suppressed and avoided nostalgia. A hated and painful nostalgia.  
And for the first time, Shim Changmin is honest with Yunho about it and confesses what has been unconsciously destroying him from the inside for the past few years.  
He tells him that he’s not ok. That _things_ are not ok. That _he_ should have been on the left side of the road, that _he_ should have thought of not letting him stay on that side, as he’s just a kid, and that Jaejoong would’ve thought about it beforehand, because Jaejoong had always known he was a little bit on the clouds and never paid attention to his surrounding. He tells him that he knows he’s feeling something now, something powerful and that he’s scared of it; he squeezes his t-shirt over his heart and tells him that it hurts, that it sucks, that he’ missing something and that he cannot avoid it anymore. That when he didn’t know what he was missing — when he didn’t know he was missing something at all — it was easier because he wasn’t always brought back to those memories he was now trying so hard to suppress. He tells him that he knows Jaejoong’s gestures were always made out of love and care and that he regrets pushing them away so many times, out of embarrassment or shame, because now he’s missing those little attentions so much, but he cannot have them back. Now it’s too late. He tells him that he wishes he could go back in time and punch Jaejoong a little lighter, that maybe those punches hurt him over time, maybe he found himself wondering if Changmin actually loved him, if he ever even cared for him — which he did, of course, but maybe Jaejoong never knew it. He tells him that he doesn’t want to keep on going like this, that it hurts too much, and Yunho finds himself spacing out at that sudden revelation: he doesn’t understand how an accidental fall has been able to awake the storm of feelings that were now crushing his fellow bandmate.

And Shim Changmin knows that Yunho cannot understand it, because he doesn’t see what he’s seeing right now.  
He sees a simple fall, but Shim Changmin sees an act of caring, a caress, a hidden laugh he should have treasured and that now is gone. Yunho doesn’t see them, but there are a series of gestures which should belong to the past, which shouldn’t keep coming back like a boomerang, but whose emptiness speaks loud now and Shim Changmin cannot avoid it anymore.  
There is a post it with a good luck wish hidden among his school books.  
There is a snack left on the top shelf of the fridge, always in the same place and always at the right time.  
There is a not so desired hug waking him up on snowy days, but whose warmth he longs for now.  
There is a soft caress on his shoulder before a big performance, there are words of support always catching him before falling, there are light punches and big laughs, homemade dinners and shared wine glasses Shim Changmin didn’t even know he loved before suddenly finding their absence unbearable.  
He looks at Yunho right in the eyes and searches for an answer he knows he cannot find behind his dark pupils, but surprisingly as soon as he starts looking for it, the older guy places his hand over his shoulder and nods imperceptibly.  
“I know”  
And Shim Changmin would like to tell him that it’s impossible that he knows it because those moments weren’t _his_ , they were _theirs_ , forged by their words and actions and personalities, but then he suddenly realizes that he isn't the only one Jaejoong shared memories with. And his eyes get bigger and his mouth opens a little bit in the hope that maybe Yunho does have the answer he’s looking for.  
But Yunho is now smiling and Shim Changmin would like to ask him how can he be ok with it, how can he still smile and laugh and joke around, when he has just realized that those daily pills of happiness had been taken away from him forever, but then again a bell rings in the noisy storm of his mind and everything appears clears for once.

_Jaejoong is not gone._

Yunho pulls him up and weeps his tears away.

_Jaejoong is not gone._

He looks at him deeply into his dark deer-shaped eyes.

_Jaejoong is not gone._

Shim Changmin can see it so clearly now, as if an invisible wind had blown away all the clouds and left a clear sky above him.

_Jaejoong is not gone._

Not forever.   
He’s there. Not really there, but _there_.  
And all Shim Changmin has to do to reach him is to stretch out a hand.


	15. Loving you – a little bit more everyday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little note before reading: the story it’s kind of cheesy and I’m not made for writing cheesy stuff.  
> And it’s very cliché so don’t expect anything from it, but I wanted to write something for yunjae anniversary so yeah here you go (even though Yunho just confessed February 6 is not his true birthday so yeah I guess this fic is pretty fucked up, but anyway...).  
> By the way I’m still in the middle of my exams session so this was kind of rushed, forgive me for it. 

 

 

[February 5, 2019]

 

 

**Loving you**

**_a little bit more everyday_ **

 

 

Jaejoong looks at the big clock hung in his bedroom moving time forward second by second, click after click. He stares at the long black arrows running in circles on the plane surface until they both meet on the highest point, marking the beginning of a new day.

He breathes in loudly before checking the phone now lightening by his side.

_How can you still love him?_

Jaejoong chuckles, choking a sad laugh behind his hand. He wonders if this is how all his relationships are ever gonna end up being, broken by the illusion of something more.

Jaejoong doesn’t like to lie. He finds it useless and very disrespectful and that’s why when Yuu tried to kiss him that night – a birthday present, he said – he moved his head to the side, avoiding it.  
Yuu looked at him with such a hurt expression, Jaejoong felt a little guilty for, but deep inside he knew it was the best thing to do. When Yuu asked him why, he just told him the truth.

“I’m in love with someone else” he said, hands in the big pocket of his winter jacket and face half hidden by the red scarf around his neck. “I just can’t” he added, before turning around and walking the streets of a frozen Tokyo back to his house.

Yuu knows him well.  
The guy has been a nice surprise of that past year. A friendship rediscovered, an unexpected happiness he didn’t know he was missing.  
He likes Yuu.  
He’s like a big tree protecting him when the wind blows too strongly, a refuge to come back to when life in Japan gets too lonely, too gloomy. He’s that kind of friend that lets him being himself because he knows he needs it when the world around himself starts getting too tight, imprisoning him in between. He’s that kind of friend that spoils him, getting along with all his childish requests, never saying anything against them. He feels like a small kid, but that’s what Yuu makes him feel like: he makes him free, he makes him immature and selfish, but overwhelming happy. He manages to make him feel light, chill, satisfied with the small things he has managed to achieve until today.  
He likes Yuu.  
Yuu that can only talk Japanese but that teases him in Korean. Yuu who knows where he has come from, what he’s done, how much he has suffered.He’s a nice person, one of those that wouldn’t abandon him in exchange for some fame. And he has such a kind soul sometimes Jaejoong wonders how he managed to survive in the entertainment industry. But it’s Yuu, he reasons. Of course he managed to.

Yuu knows him well. That’s why he thought he _knew_. That’s why he didn’t feel it was necessary to linger on the past and bring alive old memories, broken promises and sleepless nights spent crying all the tears he didn’t even know he had. But avoiding the past, running away from it, doesn’t make it any less real and Jaejoong has learnt it through the years and maybe it was his fault for thinking others had too.

_How can you still love him?_

Jaejoong doesn’t have an answer.

He didn’t have it back then when people chased him around, tormenting him with the same question over and over – “Why do you love _him_?” – and he doesn’t have it now, when time has passed but the feeling has remained, as strong and present as it was back then. Maybe a little bit less reckless, but equally true.

Maybe the answer is that he just does. It comes naturally to him.  
Loving Yunho is like singing, like cooking, an inseparable part of his being that cannot disappear just because someone asks him to.

He doesn’t know why he still loves him, why that feeling doesn’t want to get away from his scarred heart, but he doesn’t mind. Loving Yunho is beautiful: a hint of spring in the cold winter storms, a ray of light in the most impenetrable darkness.  
Sometimes he wonders if the feeling will ever actually go away. If one day he will get up and realise he has stopped loving him. He doesn’t believe it will, though, it has already been more than 18 years and the feeling is still there, still alive.

 _You haven’t seen him in years._  
_Neither have you spoken to him recently._  
_How can you Jaejoong?  
_ _How do you love so hard?_

The questions follow him like an invisible magnet, unable to get detached. And people don’t understand that he just doesn’t know.  
He doesn’t know why he fell for him that winter day of so many years ago:

maybe it was his crooked smile, always so bright and carefree, a daily pill of happiness in the tired and stressful schedules of their predebut days that always managed to make him feel light, relieved, finally home;

maybe it was his way of singing, low, hoarse, as if the words were riding on the music right from the bottom of his soul;

maybe it was his way of protecting people, of watching over them, making sure everyone was always well treated, well taken care of;

or maybe again it wasn’t anything so specific, maybe it was the mix of things that made Yunho _Yunho_ what made he fell for him: almond eyes, heart-shaped lips, a hand always on his back – supporting him –, a caress always on his shoulder – reassuring him. Maybe it was the aura he brought everywhere he went, that feeling of being protected, of being important, of being _someone_.

Jaejoong doesn’t know why, what, how he woke up someday and realised he couldn’t go without Yunho for too much time without feeling his absence _so deeply_ , as well as he doesn’t know why time can’t just erase the power of his feeling but enrich them instead, a little bit more every day.

Jaejoong’s love for Yunho is like a book whose pages are yellow and worn out but still attached to the main binding, unable to be torn away. A book he writes in everyday, adding the new habits the other has developed and the old ones that even after so much time are still engraved in his behaviour, in his talking, in his way of living.  
And how can he explain that this kind of love is not something someone would willingly get rid of. It’s a love that complete him, something that keeps him stable in the continuous storms of his life. Yunho is his reference point, his arrival line somewhere out there in the world and even though their paths are different now, forged by their choices and beliefs, Jaejoong knows that their final stop is gonna be the same.

Jaejoong looks at the big clock on the wall and realises it has already been nine years. Nine long years he has spent this day alone, hidden under the covers of a bed that’s too big for just himself, or wasted on the rooftop terrace with too many empty bottles and a weather too cold for such a warm day.

Jaejoong takes out the phone that’s still blinking on his bed but ignores all the messages and opens a phone call instead.

He’s bold, Jaejoong, he’s always been. His past company used to call him out for being so, too reckless for the public image, too oblivious for the comments he was spilling around. But Jaejoong doesn’t like to lie and prefers to address his audience in the most sincere way possible – even if sometimes he might end up being a little too extra. But that’s him. And he doesn’t want to hide it, he doesn’t want people to fall in love with someone he isn’t, to a persona built up just to appease them. He wants people to love the real him, the messed up and emotional guy that hides behind the beautiful face.

However, in love, Jaejoong has never been bold. Too afraid of ruining their already broken relationship, too afraid to suffer again and so much from that same broken heart, he loved in silence, alone, from far away, hidden in a safe place where his feelings were somehow protected from the outside world.  
But Jaejoong wants to be brave for once. He’s tired of spending his nights alone in a way too large penthouse, he’s tired of making up ideal features of ideal partners he doesn’t even like. And he’s tired of hearing the same old question over and over.

So Jaejoong gathers all the courage he has and presses the number he’s always had in his mobile, but never dared to call.  
He’s trembling: cold shivers running through his body from the very tips of his foot to the blonde shade in his hair. He doesn’t know if it is the right thing to do, but right now it’s the only one he can think of. 

“Yeoboseyo?”

Jaejoong swears he feels time stopping, freezing him in a second lost somewhere in a universe where everything is right, where everything never fell apart. A universe in which hearing Yunho’s sleepy voice is something normal, not an isolated event that makes his eyes teary and his voice broken, suddenly insecure, emotional, afraid.

Jaejoong brings a hand to his mouth to suppress the sudden sobs he doesn’t seem able to stop anyway. And he doesn’t want to cry, he really doesn’t. He doesn’t want Yunho’s first hearing of him to be a muffled cry but the tears come out against his own will and mark the pale complexion with their transparent liquid.

He hears a long sigh on the other end of the line. 

“Jaejoong”

The voice is stable, clear. Of course, thinks Jaejoong, it’s so Yunho’s, always ready to fight every dragon put on his way. Maybe that’s what Jaejoong represents for the other: another obstacle that’s now on his road again and that he has to get rid of, in one way or another.

“Why did you call” he asks then, his voice softer, soothing, and the kind melody reaches till Jaejoong’s heart, calming it down. The heartbeats are still racing, bumping in his chest frenetically, but the warm tone of Yunho’s voice somehow has a relaxing effect on him.

“I-” he tries, the words tripping on his tongue, trying to pull something out of the chaos in his mind, out of his troubled soul.  
"I don't know" he just concludes with a long sigh. 

Jaejoong waits for an answer, anything to give him the pull he needs to start talking again, like he used to, anything to bring back that old familiarity of having Yunho listening, truly listening to him.

“I miss you” he manages to pull out. “I guess miss you more _today_ and-” Jaejoong finds it so difficult to speak and he curses himself for it ‘cause speaking to Yunho had always been so natural, so easy, but now it’s now and that’s nothing more than another sign that tells him that things has changed, that they’re no longer those two reckless teens that just wanted to love. “-and I’m sorry” he finally adds, “I’m really sorry”.

“What are you sorry for Jaejoong?” he asks, no accusation in his voice, just tiredness and little curiosity. 

But Jaejoong doesn’t know how to answer: he’s sorry for everything that happened but at the same time he’s not sorry for the choice they made and he doesn’t know how to explain it to Yunho. He’s sorry for them, for the storm that raged on them after the lawsuit – and even before it to be honest. He’s sorry for not having held on enough: he has, in his heart, but sometimes actions are needed and he hasn’t act on enough, he knows it. Bold Jaejoong so scared in love.

Yunho breathes in deeply and Jaejoong knows he’s closing his eyes as he always does when reflecting on what to say, on which words to use, which topics to avoid. It’s so weird how he still remembers every habit of his, every little gesture that comes innate to the other.

“I was thinking of you yesterday actually” he suddenly says and Jaejoong swears he feels his heart stop, a forgotten feeling now spreading all over his body once again. “You know how it was your birthday – your true birthday – and all. You came through my mind. I don’t know why this year you did. Maybe you did last year too, but you didn’t call so...yeah. I didn’t call either so no need to put the blame on someone”.  
“And…” Yunho continues “And I was still thinking of you today, how, you know, _today_ ” he concludes. “I mean, these first 10 minutes of today” he adds, checking the time on his watch.

Jaejoong holds his breath for what feels like eternity before answering. 

“I am so-”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry again” Yunho quickly stops him “I’ve heard it enough. All the time since the lawsuit. “I’m sorry it happed, Yunho”, “I’m sorry we can’t do anything right now”, “I’m sorry it’s their fault”, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. Stop it, please. It’s not anyone’s fault. I was angry at the beginning, I won’t deny it, but with everything happening nowadays, I’m happy you left if it made you unconformable. I mean- I’m not happy we aren’t a group anymore, but I’m sincerely happy you found what you were looking for. I’m happy you’re better. So don’t say you’re sorry Jaejoong ‘cause I am too, for a lot of things, but it has been years and it’s time to move on”. 

Jaejoong replies in the blink of an eye, words spilling out without any control.

“I don’t want to move on”.

And Yunho laughs. It’s not a real laugh actually, more like a subtle chuckle.

“I don’t want to let go” he adds and Yunho refrains himself from saying so, but that’s so Jaejoong. That care, that love for people, and even if Yunho tries to deny it sometimes, that’s one of the reason why he fell in love with the other.

“You don’t have- _We_ don’t have to let go” he replies.

“You just said-” 

Yunho interrupts him once again: “I said move on from the past, from the mistakes, from the fights, from all those open wounds. There’s no need to dig deeper on the open skin. It hurts, Jaejoong, and I don’t want to hurt anymore”

Yunho stops for a second before going on, evaluating carefully his next words as if weighting the risk they were carrying, as if debating if it was worth it in the end.

Unlike Jaejoong, Yunho has never been reckless. He has always thought before speaking, he has always respected and forgiven others even when they didn’t deserve to, he has always done the right thing even though sometimes they weren’t the right thing for him – like letting Jaejoong go, for example, not away from the company, but away from his life. Yunho is no reckless person but there was one day, so many years ago, in which a countryside boy, hair as dark as the night and lips as red as cherries, came up to him and bulldozed his way into his life, overturning every logic Yunho had ever thought there was in life. He was a strange kid, always so gentle and warm-hearted, but fierce and determined too, and Yunho has never met anyone like him again in his life. And he has never loved anyone as strongly as he loved him either and even though he hides the feeling under the presumption that it’s just the irrational part of himself speaking, he misses it, that reckless feeling of being so in love, of giving himself away so much to someone else. And somehow he also knows that he won’t find it again with anyone else ‘cause Jaejoong knows him like no one else does – not even Changmin. Jaejoong has been there since the very beginning, since when they were nothing more than two kids who loved to sing and dance and dreamed of becoming someone, and he has seen him grow, they have grown together, they have shared so much life, they have tangled their own lives so much, Yunho knows nobody would ever be able to win in comparison.

“But from us…” Yunho starts, accepting that old feeling, “I haven’t said to move on from us”.

“I haven’t” he adds too, after a little while.

There is a long silence in which neither of them says anything, memories rushing to their minds and taking them to another time. A time in which there were no companies, no misunderstandings dividing them, a time in which Jaejoong’s smiles were bigger and happier, a time in which Yunho’s nights weren’t so cold – the warmth of another body always beside him –, a time in which love wasn’t so foreign, so difficult, so complicated, but a strange habit you could spot in the way Jaejoong prepared breakfast, always leaving Yunho the bigger bowl, or in the way Yunho woke his bandmates up, always leaving Jaejoong for last, so he could sleep a little bit more. 

Jaejoong thinks back of the question Yuu asked him some time before that night: _how can you still love him?_

And Jaejoong now has an answer for that. An answer for all his troubled feelings, an answer for all those days spent missing something without even realizing it was right there.

Because there’s this red thread connecting them which is ruined and weak and which is probably fading too, but it’s there. And Yunho is holding on to it, Yunho is waiting, Yunho is beginning to pull it, one way at a time, and Jaejoong can feel the thread pulling him forward, towards a future that looks so much brighter than his messed present. And when the game will end and the two extremities will be reunited again – deprived of any regrets and ready to finally start again – Jaejoong knows his wait will have been worth it.

_Because he keeps loving me back._

“I haven’t either” he whispers back, tears flowing down once again.

“Jung Yunho” he says, voice clear this time, “Happy birthday”.  
“Happy birthday to _us_ ” he specifies.

Yunho laughs and this time it’s an open laugh, a thirty-two teeth one. And Jaejoong smiles too, finally, curving his lips upwards and biting on his bottom one, trying to control the intensity of all his feelings.

“It was time” he replies, still smiling. “Happy birthday to us indeed”.  
“And Jaejoong” he adds.

“Hmm?” 

“I love you” he states, “I’ve loved you for quite a long time” 

Jaejoong blushes and the milky skin of his face turns several shades darker.  
“I know. And me too” he answers, but somehow the words don’t seem right so he rephrases: “I love you too. I have for quite a long time”. 

And Yunho breathes in, breathes out, and looking outside his window he sees the city lights looking back at him: so bright, so beautiful, so warmly familiar.

 


End file.
